NEWS

Special exhibition "Indigo-dyed Work Clothes" at Hachiro Yuasa Memorial Museum

Update: September 21, 2016

Starting on September 6, 2016 (Sat.), Hachiro Yuasa Memorial Museum is holding a special exhibition "Indigo-dyed Work Clothes."

Indigo-dyed fabric had been popular among people from middle Edo Period to early Showa era and had been used for workwear, furoshiki wrapping cloth and bedding cloths*. In this special exhibition, a total of 60 items including hanten short winter coats, workwear and aprons are displayed.

Visitors will find intriguing the contrast of indigo and white in the designs dyed using stencils and beauty of the patterns woven using splashed pattern yarns.

In this exhibition, the students enrolled in the curator's course participated in the preparation of the exhibition and they are conducting gallery tours. On September 14 (Wed.), Ms. Momoko Naito (4th year student) held the tour. She very politely described the era and the patterns in detail to the visitors and there was one visitor who found the hanten coat on display very nostalgic.

"ICU has a museum on campus and we can be involved in an exhibition from the preparation stage itself, so we are in such favorable situation for students taking the curator's course," said Naito. "I practiced with my friends before the gallery tour and I felt it is difficult to convey information to every visitor because what they are interested and what they want to know differ from person to person. I learned so much while considering the route and correcting the scripts."

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*While futon bedding is filled with cotton, this denotes the fabric covering its outside. It is also called futongawa (ticking).