Katagami in Practice: Japanese Stencils in the Art School (2016-18)

The Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA) was awarded funding from Arts Council England to support a major research project on Japanese stencils from the Silver Studio Collection, between 2016 and 2018.

The Silver Studio Collection at MoDA includes around four hundred Japanese katagami, traditional resist-printing stencils for textiles, dating from the late nineteenth century.  They were acquired by designers working in the Silver Studio as a source of inspiration.  The Silver Studio was a commercial design studio that operated from 1880 to 1960, producing designs for wallpapers and textiles.  MoDA’s collection of katagami is one of the largest and most significant public collections of katagami in Britain (others are at the V&A and Leeds University).

 

Katagami in the Silver Studio Collection

The katagami in MoDA’s Silver Studio Collection are among the Museum’s most popular objects.  They hold a fascination for students and creative practitioners because of the intricacy of their cutting and the beauty and stylisation of the motifs depicted.  As such they hold enormous potential for research that brings together an historical perspective with a practice-based approach, focusing on the importance of this kind of collection as a source of inspiration for artists and designers, both historically and today.

Meet the Project Participants

Caroline Collinge is a designer-maker who comes from a costume and performance background. She has a long interest in Japanese crafts of origami, and in the way in which fabrics move when worn on the body.  As part of this project, Caroline developed a costume to be worn for a filmed dance performance, entitled Waves.

 

 

Mamiko Markham was born in Kyoto and grew up making katagami from a young age. She has a deep knowledge of the symbolism of the motifs used in katagami design and in the techniques used to make them.

Mamiko’s work for this project included analysis of the katagami using an infrared camera. This revealed marks such as stamps and signatures which are not visible to the naked eye, enabling Mamiko to accurately determine the dates, geographical origins and makers of each specific stencil.

 

Dr Alice Humphrey’s interest in katagami stencils is from a rather different angle. Her PhD at Leeds University looked at the analysis of spirals in decorative designs.  Her interest in this project was in using mathematical modelling to determine how the effects of light and shade are created in the stencils using only varying thicknesses of line.  Alice developed an online tool for manipulating designs using this method.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Sarah Desmarais is a textile designer maker and crafts researcher.  She produces handprinted silks and hand-sewn garments using traditional means: drawing, resist printing and hand-dyeing.  She is interested in the distinctive characteristics of slow, skilled, labour-intensive manual crafts practices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Project Brief

Their brief was to consider MoDA’s katagami from a variety of perspectives, both historical and practice-based.   This research will enable us to contribute to ongoing international discussions about the place of katagami as objects which transition between East and West, and between past and present.  The project will also develop new approaches to the use of katagami within current teaching in Art and Design.

Project Research Outcomes

More of the research findings from the project can be found on Figshare.

This project was supported by Designation Development Funding from the Arts Council England

4 Replies to “Katagami in Practice: Japanese Stencils in the Art School (2016-18)”

  1. Sarah Jones says:

    Hello Katagami in Practice,
    It’s been a long time I am searching for such an outstanding ideas, but today I found in your blog the exact what I was looking for. Your way of presenting ideas and formatting of the blog helped me to understand better. In fact it would be a great thing to me if I will get all the next updates from your blog and will stay connected with you.

  2. Zoë Hendon says:

    HI Roy
    we will be sharing more details of the Katagami project on this blog as it develops, so you could just keep an eye here; or you could join our mailing list for regular updates (http://www.moda.mdx.ac.uk/mailing-list) if you haven't already done so. Thanks for your interest!

  3. I was there for two weeks and it's awesome, a lot of things that you could see and enjoy with, very advisable tour

  4. Roy Poulter says:

    I've had an afternoon with some of the amazing stencils at MODA and enjoyed the experience. I'm keen to find out what's going on with this new project. Do I have to sign up in some way to be kept informed and to participate?

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