Last week I had the opportunity to visit an embroidery exhibition at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo's Ueno Park.
Actually, there were two exhibitions included in the price of one ticket.
The first show featured five Japanese embroidery artists, each with a unique style quite different from the others.
Mr Toshitaro Hirano studied under his father, who was an imperial embroidery artist. The strict training of elegant silk shading for exclusive kimonos can be seen in every one of his exhibits. In turn, he taught Mr Mitsuo Akiyama, also an imperial embroidery artisan. Handing down one's knowledge and skills to the next generation is a very important part of the Japanese culture of artisans.
In this exhibition, we could also see how Toshitaro Hirano gave a modern touch to silk embroidery, which is another example of how apprentices try to expand or vary what the previous masters have done.
In the picture below, you can see that Mr Hirano has meticulously appliquéd pieces of gold coloured leather and included blocks of mother-of-pearl for these abstract flowers.
Ms Masano Onoe enjoyed painting in her childhood, and influenced by her grandmother, she learned traditional fibre crafts. After getting married, she picked up Western traditional embroidery techniques from books.
She later developed her own unique style of needle painting - by using the Straight Stitch and wool yarn on coarse hemp, she 'drew' pictures as seen in the picture here.
She held her first solo exhibition in 1966, which led to annual shows, creating designs for women's magazines, publishing books and founding the Onoe Masano Handicraft Research Institute, where she mentored the next generation of embroidery artists.
Ms Mika Okada faced difficulties with oral communication with others from a young age. Instead, she has learned to express herself with embroidered pictures.
Her motifs are a mixture of real memories and imaginary settings of landscapes and set tables, often with detailed dishes. This is said to be a diary or album style. Ms Okada mostly uses the Straight Stitch.
Picnic in a Field
Window with View of Pool
I was happy to see my own coffee pot in this scene.
I, too, used it in a piece of fibre art,
Kafferepet, in 2014.
Isn't it wonderful to see connections like this at an art exhibition?
Mr Yohei Fusegi also seems to use only a single stitch - I venture to guess it is the Seed Stitch. But there are trillions and trillions of them. The thread is thin, probably #50 machine thread, and the stitches piled one upon the other.
If I have understood it correctly, Mr Fusegi sees the stitching as a meditative action, adding one tiny stitch after another while eating or talking, without looking, just relying on the sensation in his hand, "he works with the thought of giving time to retracing an image of something he remembered at some point," quoted from the artist profile sign.
The titles are difficult to interpret for onlookers but probably very important for the artist.
In the next piece, the stitches are much longer, forming tangled loops of thread. Mr Fusegi uses plastic and bubblewrap to stitch on.
Ms Mari Mochizuki accompanied her husband on his assignments abroad and thus lived in various regions of the world.
In India she got to know 'Kantha'. This form of layering old saris or household textile items, then quilting them together with a Running Stitch is a beautiful form of recycling.
Ms Mochizuki first copied the Indian style of depicting various shapes, plants, animals and people, then she let her own style take over.
Here are some examples:
Kantha Created for the First Time
Elephants are the Kings of the Forest
Memories of Four Generations of Parents and Children
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The second exhibition was more academic. Its title was "When Embroidery is Born" and was devided into four sections:
1. Embellishing and adorning with embroidery.
Here we could see photographs of young trainees bent over embroidery on kimono silk stretched over frames.
Kimono fabric is sold in a roll (tanmono) of appr. 13 m x 40 cm. This long and narrow length of fabric is traditionally embroidered or painted before the parts of the kimono are cut out. Precision of where on the lenghts the various motifs should be is vital. One roll of fabric will make one kimono and there is only a few cm of remnant.
This section of the exhibition also showcased a few beautiful items. However, taking photographs was not allowed.
2. Studying and learning embroidery
There were old black and white photographs here too, of classrooms with girls learning stitching in 'Home Economics' lessons.
3. Guarding and praying with embroidery
On display were several white (though soiled with age and hardship) long and narrow towels (tenugui) and 'haramaki', which is a kind of bellyband resembling a cummerbund used for a tuxedo. These haramakis were worn by soldiers during WWII for warmth and protection.
On them were 1000 stitches. Female relatives would ask neighbours, friends and relatives, as well as strangers in the street, to stitch one Running Stitch each along a long line of stitches until there were 1000 stitches in total. These stitches made by 1000 individuals were supposed to offer protection to the men who were sent to the front.
Of course, there were also old photos in this section.
4. Considering & thinking with embroidery
This section housed modern works. Among them was this embroidered paperback book
and a black and white photograph of a lady stitching. The work in her hand has been stitched with real thread and tiny stitches.
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