In the last posts we saw the works of 50 famous quilters.
Today we'll look at the really heavy weights, who had a booth each, where they displayed several of their quilts and quilted goods, as well as works by their students/followers.
Let's start with Suzuko Koseki.
I would say here trademarks are RED and FASHION.
Posters like these were placed at the entrance to their booths, but unfortunately no information in English. It's sad as there is information about the quilters' background and philosophy.
I have seen this framed quilt with ruched dahlias in a book - it was nice to see it up front.
The contrast of red and white with black as an accent is striking. The New Look dresses with wide skirts below nipped in waists and high heeled shoes feature in many quilts.
By the way, Suzuko Koseki is the quilter who is in charge of the Partnership Quilt Project for Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival 2020 in Tokyo Dome in January next year. Her job will be to organise the thousands and thousands of blocks that will be sent in, into bed sized quilts of 120 blocks each. Then she has to allocate the volunteers, a quilter or quilt group for each quilt to piece, sandwich, baste, quilt and bind the quilts.
Let's go to see Sanae Kono next.
She loves ROMANTIC, FEMININE and ROSES as you can see.
She had a whole wall full of framed quilts, many with lace and velvet ribbons added to the quilting.
Here is a detail from one of her quilts. Note how the hexagon blocks turn into real flowers when a circular quilting line is going through the hexes.
Someone who likes colour is Keiko Goke.
She used to make a series of heart quilts, but has a thing for cacti at the moment.
Yoko Saito on the other hand makes quilts with almost no colour at all. She is famous for her taupe quilts. (I forgot to take a picture of her photo poster, but you might know her anyway, she is that famous.)
Ms Saito has a love for Swedish countryside culture. She, and her assistants, have made several quilts like this one.
(Suzuko Handa/ 半田涼子)
(Miyoko Shitsuga/室賀美代子)
Yoko Ueda (上田葉子) makes good use of her education in Arts. Nature often features in her elegant and modern quilts. The lotus flower looks 3-dimensional but it is all flat.
Kathy Nakajima = Hawaiian quilts, although she also makes beautiful floral quilts mainly with roses.
Some of the quilts are really huge.
Her son, Yosuke, is following in her footsteps, but also trying to find his own way, as he adds lots of beads and embroidery to the quilts. He also makes clothing.
Next we have a team of two quilters who use F.O.I as their official name.
Their work must be called GRAPHIC. It is also colourful and very modern.
Among their displays were these new quilting blocks. Based on Japanese writing, kanji (the Chinese characters), they have used the shape of the writing to illustrate the meaning of the word.
Let's see if I can explain this:
Look again at the design I have circled in purple.
The character for person, 'jin' or 'hito', 人 can be seen if you look at the person walking.
I am sure Kumiko Fujita (藤田久美子) and Kazue (?) Nakajima (中島一恵) of F.O.I had great fun creating these new modern quilting block patterns.
There were two more very famous quilters in this part of the show, but I am sorry to say I did not have the time to take pictures at the booths of Shizuko Kuroha (黒羽志寿子) and Reiko Washizawa (鷲沢玲子).
More quilts next time!
