Japan Deco

This is the Japan deco I made for Carol over at Decos du coeur. A while ago, I found a book called Snow, Wave, Pine: Traditional Patterns in Japanese Design at the library. It dedicates a couple pages per motif in Japanese design and gives a brief description of the motif and then many beautiful colour examples of the motif on kimonos, dishes, furniture, and more. The descriptions are pretty cursory and there isn't as much information supplied about the examples as I would like (dates would be nice) but it's still a gorgeous book. And there are interesting tidbits thrown in. For example, when a bridge was built in medieval Japan, a human sacrifice by drowning or burying alive accompanied it in order to appease the gods. That was morbid but it's the one tidbit that has stuck. At some point, I'll scan and post some of my favourite objects. There is a rabbit kimono that I want want WANT in the book.

At the moment, I'm in love with the flowing water/mist motif. Since it's often paired with maple leaves (something I learned from the book), I decided to combine them for my deco cover. The cover is water colour paper painted cerulean blue. The running water motif is cut from echizen. The maple leaves are cut from chiyogami. I had initially hoped to cut them from maple-leaf print chiyo for a meta feel but we only had two and on of them is in greys. I went for botanicals instead with the addition of one auspicious symbol print. At least I think that it's an auspicious symbol pattern.

I think that I'll make a similar one for myself for a Japan deco swap that's coming up at the Circus. There are some designs I hit upon and I just want to churn them out until one of them comes home. Is that bad?

Oh, and I think that I'm officially addicted to Japanese design. It just took a bit of research. Figures. I'm an academic to the bones.