PUBLIC MARKS with tags pattern & location:japan

The presence of traditional Japanese patterns throughout Kyoto -- from textiles and paper to ceramics and other objects to interior design and architectural details -- aroused my curiosity, and in the komon monyou card set by MONKARUTA I found a lovely resource to learn more about them -- and to practice reading Japanese as well. In addition to the two sets with matching pictures, to play Pairs (Memory) and various other games, there is a third set of cards with a brief explanation of the pattern's usage and meaning.

SERIZAWA KEISUKE (1895-1984) Ehon Don Kihōte (A Don Quixote Picture Book), title page dated October 1936 but book completed 1937. Paper stencilling and hand painting on paper, 11 1/4 x 8 1/4 in. Tōhoku Fukushi University Serizawa Keisuke Art and Craft Museum.

I had the good fortune to tour the comprehensive survey of works by textile master Serizawa Keisuke at the Japan Society, curated with admirable rigor by the society's gallery director Joe Earle, with two formidable blondes, Alexandra Peers of the Wall Street Journal and Alice Judelson of I-20 Gallery. As Peers commented, using an old journalistic term, "They buried the lede," by putting the jewels of the exhibition, Serizawa's incomparable kimonos from the 1960s, in a back room of the gallery, where you might miss them.

Shapes are quite simple but considerable in their proportion. It's rumored that Louis Vuitton gets influenced by these shape.

japanese patterns