Art Gallery – Vintage Woodblock Prints

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A few years ago on my birthday, I went to dinner with my folks and some family friends. I had a wonderful time, the food was delicious, and I got some lovely gifts.

Leslie is the daughter of my father’s godmother. Bear with me, I know this is starting to sound like the beginning of an urban legend, but it is well and truly relevant. My grandmother and I share a birthday, and I believe inherited a lot of my fascination with the Japanese aesthetic from her. Her apartment was so tastefully furnished and had a lot of beautiful Japanese antiques and art pieces. I think they had a profound impact on me when I was a young girl, more so than I realized until recently. Kay, Leslie’s mother, was my grandmother’s dear friend when they were young, and was my father’s godmother. Leslie is family, even though not related by blood.

 

Kay purchased these beautiful woodblock prints while travelling in Japan with my grandmother many years ago. As far as I can tell, they were carefully lifted from a hand-bound book, each one has holes along one end of the page. The labels on the backs of the frames credit them to Utagawa Kunisada and date them to the mid-1800s. I have been unable to find other copies of these two prints anywhere on the internet so I can’t back the veracity of the claims, but they seem reasonable.

Imagine my shock when Leslie passed these on to me for my birthday, knowing how touched I would be, and how much I would appreciate them. All the gifts I got were incredibly thoughtful and I appreciated them all, but I was well and truly flabbergasted by these two simple but beautiful prints, due to the way they tied so many facets of the relationship between Leslie, her mother, my grandmother, and myself together so beautifully.

Outfit of the Week: Lily Furi Coordination

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After deciding to make this a regular feature, I started planning out all sorts of outfits. Seasonally appropriate outfits, special combinations for holidays, etc. And then this lily furisode arrived and all my plans flew right out the window! I couldn’t wait to do something with it. I had this really lovely warm gold fukuro obi with subtle green and pink accents from the obi bundle eons ago, and it seemed like the perfect complement to the rich green of the kimono. I also happened to have just about the perfect obidome for this kimono, a gold oval with pink lilies on it!

Unfortunately, this also reminded me how long it’s been since I tied anything other than a simple hanhaba or nagoya obi, and I ended up having to improvise a sort of large-scale cho-cho/bunko hybrid musubi. It’s not ideal, but I think it worked out alright.

Items used in this coordination

Lily Furisode

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It’s been literally several years since I bought a kimono. I still have ones I haven’t worn, ones that don’t fit, ones that I am too old for. I’d promised myself no more buying kimono.

And then Jess went and put this one up on the market. I have coveted this kimono for as long as she’s had it. I love the rich, dark green colour and the beautiful, delicate lilies. She needed money, I needed this kimono. Clearly, it was meant to be.

It arrived today, and it’s everything I’d been hoping for and more. I can’t wait to dress Tsukiko in it!

The body is a gorgeous rich deep green, intersected with a sort of ribbon-like fluid design and lilies. The hem is navy blue, which I did not realise in the photos!

New Feature: Outfit of the week!

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Everyone, please say hello to the newest contributor to this blog. Her name is Tsukiko, she has no head, and she will be modelling outfits and coords that are either too small or too fragile for me to wear myself. As you probably know, my health is still not fantastic, and dressing myself simply for photoshoots is tiring and not ideal. Hopefully having Tsukiko around will encourage me to post more frequently! I am aiming to do one coordination a week, but we’ll see how long that lasts 😉

Today’s coordination was mostly an excuse to use this gorgeous antique irotomesode/komon hybrid. I have been in love with this thing since I received it, but it’s incredibly delicate and fragile silk and it’s very tiny. Realistically, even if I lost a hundred pounds, it still would not fit me. I paired it with a vintage remake obi I love to bits that’s also awkwardly small, and I love how soft and dusty they feel together. The obiage, obijime, and haneri are all modern, but they have a similarly desaturated pastel feel and I think they look perfect with the kimono. Please click on the images to see larger versions.

Items used in this coordination

Fun With Kimono Dolls, part 3!

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The first two entries in this series were so fun and so well-received I thought that another round would be a fun way to get back into regular blogging. Lots of neat new kimono doll-maker apps have come out since I did the first two, so hopefully you will find one you love. 🙂

I have also gone through the previous entries and tidied them up, removing dead links and adding larger thumbnails.

Wedding Kimono - Lots of fun, flashy, modern-style uchikake in this one! There is a variety of skintones and some versatile wigs, so decent base customisation. You can choose from several different kimono and several different obi.
Girls Kimono Show - Two girls in this one! Lots of very fun furisode and accessories. Kimono and obi are already paired, but you can choose handbags, footwear, scarves, etc to coordinate. There are also outfits with hakama. Plenty of hairstyles, eyecolours, makeup, etc to choose from but the skin tones are fixed.
Cute Kimono - Bit of a misnomer here, this one is actually yukata. Plenty of adorable patterns that vary from traditional to modern. Decent choice of accessories, and the base model is pretty customisable too.
Geisha Scene - By far the most customisation when it comes to the kimono. You can choose colours, patterns, accents, etc. There are also lots of options for collar and hem style, and you can make them as accurate or as inaccurate as you'd like. Up to three ladies can be included, and their hairstyles, makeup, and skintone can all be changed. Tons of options in this one!
Garden Geisha Scene - Choose from a selection of pre-designed kimono and obi, and then choose accessories, parasol, footwear, etc. Not a lot of customisation, but still makes a lovely little doll.
Furisode Maker - Lots of patterns and colours available in this one. Personally I find the pose a little awkward, but still fun. There are a selection of skin tones in this one too, but they seem to all be tint shifts of the original colour and as such don't feel very natural.
Chibi Kimono Maker - Quite possibly I've saved the best for last. This is where my new sidebar avatar came from, and it has an enormous variety of colours, patterns, and textures. There are options for multiple layers of pattern and gradient for the kimono, fancy obijime, date-eri, all the fun little accessories that make kitsuke such a creative hobby. Lots of hair colours and styles and a wide array of skintones give you tons of freedom with this adorable little doll maker.