Saturday morning I went to one of the last Vintage Kimono sales held by TEXUBA, who finds old and rare kimonos in Japan and sells them to customers in the U.S. They are eventually going to retire the business so the prices were amazing at this show. I found a beautiful patterned short silk kimono jacket for my daughter for $15. But, here is what I really went for:
This is a Vintage Wedding Kimono textile panel.
There was a paragraph on the label saying that some of these wedding kimono (called Uchikake) sell for $20,000 to $100,000 in Japan and only the very rich can afford one, so they actually rent them out for weddings. That is one of the many reasons for the decline of the wedding kimono industry there. It is less expensive to get married in one of our western style wedding gowns and the young people of Japan are getting more westernized and may not own any kimono at all.
I love this pattern, a detail from my panel
and here is the bird on the bottom of the fabric. Spectacular! It is very heavy embroidery and the colors are amazing.
They wouldn’t let anyone take photos of the fabrics at the sale. So now that I own these pieces of fabric, I can.
Here is a detail from the second piece I got.
and this too.
It is hand painted, with gold in spots and also has some embroidery and gold cording sewn on. Chrysanthemums are one of my favorite asian design elements. I have been thinking about making a piece of jewelry using these fabrics somehow. Oh and an artstamp or two with the photos.
My third panel:
mums and more mums!!!!
And last, here is the picture that was on the receipt. Isn’t this face great? I like the hand, the teeth and the two text shapes on the right.
Here is another reason why you haven’t heard from me more this week.
I was working on these beads. I used... yeah PMC! They are two sided.
One side of each one is a rolled out and textured sheet of PMC and the other side is made of my special syringe filigree technique.
Well, it’s not really mine, but I figured it out for myself. First I made a shape using cork clay and let it dry for a couple of days. Then I draw the pattern on the shape with a sharpie. Using a syringe I outline all the drawn lines making sure that all the joins touch each other. After it dries I build it all up with 3 to 5 layers of PMC paste. It creates this very cool texture.
When it's dry I texture some clay and lay it over the other side and cut it to fit.
Here they are all finished.
I didn’t use a tumbler here. When they came out of the kiln I just used my soft brass brush with warm soapy water. Then I used Black Max to patina and then polished off the high spots. Black Max makes the silver pretty black, more than liver of sulphur.
Last thing I did was assemble this birdhouse that had been hanging around for a while. I used blue topaz and a tiny white pearl. Look! There is a little topaz drop hanging from the roof like a drip of water. I love that blue color!
And here is a small detail I have to show you because it came out so clearly with my camera.
It is my favorite bird. Do you see that he is smiling? It’s my alter ego.
ttfn
