Katagami stencil with roundels against a background of fine stripes and undulating lines.

Katagami stencil with roundels against a background of fine stripes and undulating lines. The roundels contain flowering grass heads against a background of fine reticulated lines. Tie bars are used to hold the stencil structure, these would be covered over by paste applied through a second stencil so would not appear on the printed textile. Black ink patterning on this stencil suggests that the second stencil may have included additional patterning creating a background of lines running at right angles across the ovoid blank areas on this stencil. This stencil is of the sansun okuri or koban size class (determined by the repeat length). This is one of around 400 Japanese katagami stencils which are part of the Silver Studio Collection. The stencils were produced in Japan as a way of applying patterns to fabric, mainly kimonos. The katagami collected by the Silver Studio were used by their designers as reference material to produce their own Japanese-inspired patterns.