Kubota Itchiku Art Museum
While spending a day at Lake Kawaguchiko to admire the spectacular Mount Fuji, I had to go to the Kubota Itchiku Art Museum! I always love learning and understanding more about costumes, textiles, techniques and social and cultural meaning of the clothes. So visiting the museum dedicated to the artist who revived the lost art of Tsujigahana silk dyeing was a must!
Tsujigahana silk dyeing was one of the techniques of making patterns by bunching up a small bit of the cloth, tying it with string and then dyeing the cloth and embellishing it with intricate embroidery, elaborate brush painting and gold-leaf application. The technique became a lost technique in the 17th century.
In his early twenties, Kubota Itchiku encountered Tsujigahana with a fragment of textile exhibited at the Tokyo National Museum, and he became so fascinated with the piece of art that he devoted the rest of his life to recreate the dyeing technique.
The Kubota Itchiku Art Museum is showcasing several of the artist's kimono creations, as well as parts of his unfinished masterpiece "Symphony of Light" - a monumental work of 80 kimono that together form of a picture of Mount Fuji.
The museum's buildings and gardens were enchanting just by themselves, with a majestic view of Mt. Fuji and of serene Lake Kawaguchi, and it was a pleasure wandering around.
Part of the 'Symphony of Light'
Since it is not allowed to take photos in the museum, I am sharing here pics found on the Kubota collection website.
