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| Passion Investments: Antiques |
Undiscovered Country
Marisa Bartolucci
11/01/2004
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Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, an
expert in Japanese textiles, begs to differ. “Textiles lovers are discovering
these pieces,” Wada maintains. “Boro is opening them up to a different
sensibility, because they are not complete pieces.”
From Trash To Trend
For years, Japanese artist Kousaku Nukata was one of
the few boro collectors in his country. Boro textiles were regarded by most
Japanese as embarrassing reminders of the rural poverty of old Japan. Minds
changed when Nukata put on an exhibition of pieces from his collection in a
trendy Osaka store in 2002. Earlier this year, Wada opened many eyes in the
United States to the soulful aesthetic of boro when she featured 12 pieces from
Nukata’s collection in a show she curated at San Francisco’s Museum of Craft and
Folk Art, the theme of which was recycled objects.
 Nukata and Wada presented
the pieces unabashedly as art, and patrons immediately recognized them as
testaments to beauty forged from necessity. Some have since become avid
collectors. “A single piece of boro looks great against the cast concrete walls
of a contemporary Japanese house,” says Chicago-based tribal art dealer Douglas
Dawson. “The work is perfect for minimalist interiors.”
Now that aficionados
have discovered boro, the prices are rising, but they remain highly affordable.
In the United States, distinctive examples can be found from $600 to $5,000 for
mounted versions, depending on the dealer.
High-grade cotton rags were also
employed in making quilted working clothes and sleeping kimonos called yogi, so
thickly stuffed with castoff bast fibers or cotton batting that they were often
difficult to move in. To make yogi and layered work clothes, women would quilt
with a running stitch called sashiko. This needlework also served to strengthen
and reinforce the garments. The white cotton thread contrasted appealingly with
the indigo-colored cloth, and in time what began as a strictly utilitarian and
durable form of stitching developed into something highly decorative. The sewing
could be quite dense, running vertically and horizontally to create diamond
patterns, or it could appear open and curved to form petal shapes. It also
varied by region and the use of the garment.
| “The complete randomness of the patching, the juxtapositions of
patterns and scale, and the meandering stitching is often
Dada-like.” |
Well-preserved, exquisite
examples of sashiko are highly prized. Cynthia Shaver, a dealer in Mingei
textiles based in Belvedere, Calif., has priced a late 19th-century indigo
cotton hanten, or work vest, in perfect condition, at $6,400. Kahlenberg of
Tai Gallery sells a late 19th-century worker’s coat, known as a noragi, with two
different forms of sashiko and double kasuri (the Japanese term for ikat)
sleeves for $3,800.
Szczepanek has a penchant for more eccentric needlework.
The dealer recently sold a heavily patched and mended indigo cotton noragi with
thick white sashiko, which he describes as “radiating down and across the coat
like a meteor shower in a star-laden sky.” Although stunning, the stitching was
less refined, and so the noragi was less valuable: It sold for $1,200. In time,
however, Szczepanek believes collectors will come to value such individually
expressive sewing as highly as the more traditional examples.
Shredded Treasures
Japanese rustics also demonstrated their frugal
artistry in the recycled woven textiles known as sakiori, which date back to the
mid-18th century. Since cotton was so precious, families recycled every bit of
it, even their own ragged garments and futonji. These materials would be
shredded and, along with merchant-bought, low-grade cotton scraps, serve as the
weft in the weaving of a warm, tough cloth from which jackets, pants and
blankets could be made. Therefore the name sakiori, a combination of the words
saku, meaning “to tear,” and oru, meaning “to weave.”
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