A Sapphire Blue Cotton Indigo Boro Panel: Katazome Dyed

ca. late nineteenth century
73" x 13", 185.5 cm x 33 cm

This is a richly colored and beautiful length of indigo dyed cotton katazome boro cloth.  

The blue of this cloth is deep and sapphire blue, and the length is stitched from three separate pieces of katazome cloth, each piece showing a different pattern: on top is karakusa or arabesque, in the center is stylized chrysanthemum, and on the bottom is shippo tsunagi, a tradtional interlocking circles motif.

Each of these three pieces is quite heavily patched and stitched; there are six patches in total.

As this cloth is dyed using a stencil resist technique, the cotton was first dyed in a fairly dark indigo.  Then, this dark blue was resisted and it was dyed again, yielding the velvety very dark blue of the finished piece.

It is wonderful that there should be three different, traditional stencil patterns along this length of boro cloth--and this is without doubt a gorgeous piece to own and to admire.

Just beautiful.