Silk painting / dying

11/26/09

A few weekends ago I went to Kanazawa, and one of the places I visited was Kaga Yuzen Silk, which was Miyazaki Yuzensai and contains many of his works / dyed kimonos. It was a very interesting building, and they had descriptions on the process that the silk was painted in. There was one room in particular that had all the different paints they use and examples of the silk process in mid-way completion.

Before doing anything, they draw the design for the silk first on paper, and then they transfer it to the kimono, then once it is transfered they outline it with a black ink. Once that is done they begin to paint the pattern using the paints shown in the picture above, until it results in strips of the design that once they are side by side,  create the full image, as seen below.

 After all the painting is done, the painted parts are covered with a paste made of soybeans and rice. Once the paste is dried and completelycovering all parts of the painted design, the background of the kimono is dyed. The mud paste blocks the detailed design from getting dyed from the backgroud. Once everything has dried, they have to remove the paste by rinsing the silk panels in running water, such as a river. But now, instead, they just use a machine that creates a current of running water. Once all the panels are dyed, the silk panels are stitched together to either create kimonos or just a silk mural, such as below.

The designs were really gorgeous and the process itself was fascinating. It really makes me want to try silk dying myself, but the process seems fairly difficult. The place did have a place where you could dye your own silk, but I was a little too cheap to actually do it, and didn't have the time for it either. But for the longest time I have wondered how exactly they get such intricate painted designs on kimonos, with the backgrounds being very smooth and fluid, and I am very glad that I got to learn the Yuzen process and see the gorgeous silk displays.