Kimonos and obi are indispensable for special occasions such as coming-of-age ceremonies and weddings. The spirit of Heizo Tatsumura, the founder of Tatsumura, laid the foundation for the elegance of Tatsumura's textiles, which is renowned for its excellence in art textiles and loved by many female writers and actresses, and which is still fresh and classy even in the modern era of Reiwa. I will also introduce this.

Tatsumura's restoration cracks and exotic design

In tracing Tatsuson's footsteps and achievements since the time of the first Heizo, it is essential to ``restore textiles.'' Ancient gire, which is housed in Horyuji and Shosoin temples, is a tradition from China and West Asia that captivated Japan's upper classes with its cutting-edge dyeing and weaving techniques and beautiful designs, as well as the imported gire, which was loved by medieval Sukiya. We have brought back various dyed and woven products to their original appearance, including the famous Meibutsugire dyed and woven fabric.

One of the restored masterpieces, Sairenjumon Nishiki, shown in the photo, is a weft brocade that was estimated to have been restored from dozens of large and small fragments kept at Shosoin.The wefts have colored patterns. The design is based on the so-called twin beast pattern under the trees, with a flowering tree in the center, paired with a winged, two-horned sacred animal, a rhinoceros and a small lion, surrounded by a series of beads. The main poem is composed of a diamond-shaped subtext of Nindo Karakusa, which is a pattern of a plant similar to a honeysuckle.The main poem is a Persian (present-day Iran) design, but it is made of Persian-style brocade. It has been said that this is an example of the early Tang Dynasty (618-907), when full-scale weaving began.As a result of research, there is now a strong possibility that it dates back to the early Sui Dynasty (518-618). Restoration of four generations).

At Tatsumura, we have reflected the exotic aesthetic sense cultivated through restoration, such as a richly original sense of color and advanced weaving techniques, into modern obi. For example, the fukuro-obi in the photo, ``Mosaic Kinka'', is one of the fukuro-obi with an exotic design. The design depicts birds flying about against an arabesque pattern with peonies, a symbol of wealth, and grapes, representing fertility. The long-tailed bird has long been considered an idealized and abstracted form of a bird, replacing the phoenix. The other is the pigeon, which is popular both in the East and the West as a messenger of God and a symbol of peace. All of them express auspicious oriental motifs with Western mosaic-like expressions and bright color schemes, resulting in gorgeous, modern works.

Obi: Tatsumura Art Textile
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