焔Maison HomuraShop
3335
五 · Cloth — Kyoto

Yūzen

A fan painter worked out how to stop one colour running into the next, and silk became a canvas.

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Yūzen — Kyoto
Kyoto · From the late 1600s

Until the late seventeenth century you could dye silk, but you could not paint on it: wet colour spreads along the fibre and every edge turns to mud. Then a Kyoto fan painter called Miyazaki Yūzensai found the answer, and it was rice paste.

You draw the design, then pipe a fine line of paste along every outline from a paper cone. The paste is a wall. Colour brushed inside it cannot cross. When the work is finished the cloth is steamed to fix the dye and then washed, and the walls disappear — leaving a painting with a hairline of undyed white along every edge.

None on the shelf right now. We find these one at a time. Leave your email and we will write the day a Yūzen arrives — nothing else.

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  1. Write to the house. A person in Fukuoka replies, usually within a day or two.
  2. When a piece is agreed, the house sends you a private payment link, and you pay by card.
  3. It ships from Japan.

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For
Yūzen — at the workshop
At the workshop
How it is made
  1. 下絵Shitae

    The design is drawn on the silk in blue juice that will wash out.

  2. 糊置きNorioki

    Rice paste is piped along every line from a paper cone, thin as a hair.

  3. 挿し友禅Sashi-yūzen

    Colour is brushed inside the paste walls. It cannot bleed across them.

  4. 水元Mizumoto

    Steamed to fix, then washed until the paste and the blue lines are gone.

That white outline is how you know it is hand-drawn yūzen and not a stencil copy. It is the paste, remembered.

The washing was once done in the Kamo river, long ribbons of silk moving in the current. It is done indoors now, which is sensible and a great deal less beautiful.

From four sides
Yūzen — Front
Front
Notes
Fibre
Silk, dyed after weaving — the opposite of kasuri
Who
Miyazaki Yūzensai, a fan painter, Kyoto
The wall
Rice paste piped from a paper cone
The tell
A hairline of white along every outline
About the place

A dorei is not a decoration that happens to rattle. It is a bell — unglazed earthenware, fired with a pellet loose inside, with a sound hole cut at the foot. The note is dry and short, nothing like metal.

Kyoto · Clay bells and netsuke →Ask us to find one →The Old Capitals · By region →

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