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Japanese Folk Textiles from the Edo Period and Beyond Skidmore College Creative Matter MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019 MALS 8-31-2015 An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness: Japanese Folk Textiles from the Edo Period and Beyond Mary E. Dolden Veale Skidmore College Follow this and additional works at: https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/mals_stu_schol Part of the Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons Recommended Citation Dolden Veale, Mary E., "An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness: Japanese Folk Textiles from the Edo Period and Beyond" (2015). MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019. 111. https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/mals_stu_schol/111 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the MALS at Creative Matter. It has been accepted for inclusion in MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019 by an authorized administrator of Creative Matter. For more information, please contact [email protected]. - I - • ... II ... === - I - - - == = II - � - - = • - ... = I = AN AESTHETIC OF RESOURCEFULNESS - sakiori - Mary Dolden Veale AN AESTHETIC OF RESOURCEFULNESS: Japanese Folk Textiles from the Edo Period and Beyond: Shifu, Sakiori and Baro Skidmore College June 2015 AN AESTHETIC OF RESOURCEFULNESS: Japanese Folk Textiles from the Edo Period and Beyond: Shifu, Sakiori and Bora by Mary E. Dolden Veale Final Project submitted in partial fu lfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Skidmore College June 201 5 Advisors: Sangwook Lee, Claudia Mills Abstract This paper describes the place in time - the vernacular context in socia l, economic, cultural and geographic terms - in which specific utilitarian textiles -- sakiori, shifu and boro -- were produced in Japan from, roughly, the Eda (or Tokugawa), through the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa periods, or 1600 to the mid-1900's. Sakiori, shifu and boro clothing and household textiles incorporated re-purposed, recycled fibers and materials in response to conditions of poverty and harsh living conditions in rural Japan. These utilitarian artifacts affect particu lar aesthetic qualities, reflective of the conditions within which they were originally produced, and are resonant, to some contemporary audiences, in their simplicity and humility of a late 20th and early 21st century modernist sensibility. Definitions of Japanese textile terms: Shifu Shifu is cloth woven using either recycled paper, which has been treated and spun to form the weft in fabric, or washi paper as the weft in weaving this fabric. Sakiori Sakiori is cloth made of torn cotton weft and hemp warp. Later the warp used was cotton. Pieces of cotton were torn into strips and then used as the weft in the weaving of this utilitarian cloth. Bora Baro is the term that defines household textiles and clothing that were sewn of rags and remnants of cast­ off, Japanese clothing. They were often sewn and mended in layers to create warm and durable items for wearing and use by the northern, rural population of Japan. Table of Contents I. Introduction A. Background B. MALS Academic Structure II. Thesis A. Shifu B. Sakiori C. Bora D. History, Aesthetics and Resonance Ill. A Place in Time A. Geography B. Social, Politica l and Economic History C. Isabella Lucy Bird -A Valuable Observer of Japan in 1878 D. Cotton and Tabane in Japan E. Ai: Indigo F. Kitamaesen IV. Objects to Artifacts A. Weaving Technologies and Materials B. Plain Weave C. Shifu 0. Sakiori E. Bora V. Aesthetic Context VI. Concl usion An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness M. Dolden Veale MALS Thesis An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness: Japanese Folk Textiles from The Edo Period and Beyond; Sakiori, Shifu and Boro I. Introduction Background In the autumn of 1993 I moved to Okinawa, Japan where I lived for the following three years. Prior to that, and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had worked as a writer, editor and consultant focusing on topics of design, art and architecture. During the mid-eighties, I made several trips to Tokyo as a design consultant to Japanese universities, but actually living in Okinawa was an entirely new and enlightening experience. Unbeknownst to me as a new arrival in 1993, Okinawa has an incredibly rich and deep heritage of art and craft, in many disciplines, but especially in textiles, and has, since at least the 141h century. Lucky me. On one of my earlier trips to Tokyo around 1984, I found a small shop called Numo that specialized in textiles made in Japan. As I think back, that was a beginning of what became an intense, lifelong interest in Japanese Figure 1 Sak iori textiles. Many years later, and having lived abroad in very different places - Ob i early 20th c. An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness M. Dolden Veale MALS Thesis from California to Cairo, and Texas to Dubai - I decided to follow that interest in broader terms; in historical textiles, while studying for a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) degree at Skidmore College. The MALS program would allow me to focus on a program of study that I hoped would form the basis for writing a book on the international tradition of ragweaving, a fairly particular type of folk, or vernacular, textile that had evoked my personal interest. "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." Camille Pissarro My goal in this thesis is to describe the place in time - the vernacular context in social, economic, cultural and geographic terms - in which specific utilitarian textiles -­ sakiori, shifu and boro -- were produced in Japan from, roughly, the Edo (or Tokugawa), through the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa periods, or 1600 to the mid-1900's. Sakiori, shifu and boro clothing and household textiles incorporated re-purposed, recycled fibers and materials in response to conditions of poverty and harsh living conditions in rural Japan. These utilitarian artifacts affect particular aesthetic qualities, reflective of the conditions within which they were originally produced, and are resonant, to some contemporary audiences, in their simplicity and humility of a late 2Qlh and early 21't century modernist sensibility. Over the years, I have maintained my interest and love for antique and simply old textiles, textile design and what is variously termed "na·1·ve," "vernacular," "country" or "folk" art or craft. Having been fortunate enough to have traveled fairly extensively, and An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness M. Dolden Veale MALS Thesis living abroad many years, I have seen, enjoyed and sought out folk textiles - quilts, rag weavings and cata/ogne weaving from North America and Scandinavia, sakiori and shifu weavings and the eccentric form of tattered and mended textile - boro - from Japan - are some examples. I am not a collector, but perhaps better described as a scholar in training. There is an ephemeral quality to most of these utilitarian objects, and it is reflected in the Fig ure 2 Catalogne blanket, Quebec, 20th c. changes in aesthetic and cultural value some these pieces have taken on over time. But many, if not most, have simply disappeared with time and neglect. Many, having been originally made for heavy household use or work clothing, were simply worn beyond redemption, never having been accorded the status of "worth saving." But over time, with changes in global design awareness and tastes, and worldwide access through technology, just as American quilts went from trunks and attics to art museums and art collectors' storerooms in the latter half of the 20th century, the sakiori, the boro and some of the old rag rugs, indigenous household cloths, bedding and domestic carpets, even as fragments, have been studied, exhibited, valued and, at least to some extent, have lately become "collectible" to individuals and to institutions. An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness M. Dolden Veale MALS Thesis Especially in the case of the Japa nese vernacular textiles I describe here, there is some measure of heroism in their preservation and collection. Their extreme utilitarian nature -- refashioned from original clothing into other forms of clothing, then taken apart and made into bedding or household cloth, including diapers and, simply re­ made, again, into clea ning rags and potholders, or in the case of sakiori, actually torn into strips and rewoven -- makes their continued existence somewhat remarkable. How many, many other examples are simply gone, and are we seeing mainly "the best" of what was deemed, somehow, Fig ure 3 Detail of bo ro; sashiko stitching worthy of preservation? The practice of making simply woven, inexpensive rugs out of recycled (or re­ purposed) fabric strips continues in the present, in vast quantities, but now at an industrial, not domestic scale in China, especially. Even on a smaller, hand-woven scale, in the 1990's the daughters of the garbage men of Cairo, Egypt, were taught, in an effort to improve their lives and develop marketable skills, to weave simple rugs from the scraps of fabric gleaned (and cleaned) from the city's trash heaps. Right now, in India, the vibrant but fragile "hand loom" industry is in danger of becoming obsolete, the result of new legislation to promote and protect the commercial (or power loom) weaving industry.; An Aesthetic of Resourcefulness M. Dolden Veale MALS Thesis In their 1977 book, The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art, Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Buferd;; wrote an oral history based on their conversations and observations of the women of the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, grew up and raised families in essentially pioneer households under very tough circumstances, and - out of necessity
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