I have discovered three special pieces of Katagami stencilled fabrics in my stash!

Katagami is a highly skilled craft that involves cutting handmade Japanese Mulberry paper with a very sharp stencil knife. The paper is made to be waterproof by laminating several sheets together with the 5 year’s aged juice of the Persimmon fruit or “Kakishibu” and the smoking the paper and keeing it stored dry for at least a year.

The apprenticeship for a stencil cutter is 10 years due to the highly accurate and technical hand skills required to master the craft.

The artist that uses these stencils does Katazome (“zome” means to dye in Japanese). This is also a highly skilled craft as the stencil dyer has to make a fine paste to spread across the stencil and pattern match it down a whole bolt (“Tan”) of fabric.

The best fabrics are pattern matched and pasted on both sides! This is incredibly skilled work taking years of training. And some stencils are coloured using a second stencil.

I have just three special pieces for you. Please read the additional info:

1. A coloured piece with red dye in parts on a traditional Crane and Turtle (both revered in Japan and representing Prosperity and Long life respectively)

2. A piece with stylised Chrysanthemums (pasted on both sides).

3. A darker piece with large flowers (pasted on both sides)