Kimono, titled 'Grey of Dawn' by Moriguchi Kunihiko, purple and blue-black crêpe silk with a resist-dyed pattern, Japan, 1987

Formal kimono (homongi) of crêpe silk with a yuzen-dyed striated pattern on a purple and black speckled (makinori) ground.
The garment is lined with black-on-white makinori silk.

Registered File number 1990/2069.

The following text is adapted from Faulkner, Rupert, Japanese Studio Crafts: Tradition and the Avant-Garde, London: Laurence King Publishing, 1995. NAL Bibliographic Ref..No.: 58.DD.517:
‘The contrast between the designs of the Kyoto-based Moriguchi Kako (1909 -; appointed Living National Treasure in 1967) and his son Moriguchi Kunihiko, who was responsible for this kimono, says much about the diversity of interests informing the work of contemporary Japanese yuzen artists. Kako’s classicising designs, often executed in an expansive painterly style, are based directly on the sketches of nature that he regularly goes out to draw. The titles of Kunihiko’s highly innovative and equally arresting kimono reflect a similarly deep-rooted concern with the natural world. His designs are arrived at not through direct observation of nature, however, but through a process of abstraction that involves taking a single stylised motif and subjecting it to a series of mathematically determined transformations.
‘…An additional technique unique to the Moriguchis, and used to magnificaent effect on this kimono, is the sprinkling on of small particles of rice resist past prior to and between applications of the background colours. The mottling that this so-called makinori (sprinkled rice paste) technique gives rise to can be gradated by varying the density of application of the resist particles. The pioneering of the makinori technique by Moriguchi Kako dates back to the period immediately after he became a fully qualified yuzen master in 1939.’

For a description of the basic techniques of yuzen-dyeing, see FE.420:1-1992.

The textile artist Moriguchi Kunihiko employs the traditional resist-dying technique of yuzen to create kimono with elegant, modern designs. An additional technique unique to the Moriguchi, and used to great effect on this kimono, is the sprinkling on of small particles of rice paste prior to and between applications of the background colours. This process, known as makinori, creates a mottled effect.

FE.421:1-1992