Katagami stencil depicting cranes in flight amongst pine branches

Katagami stencil depicting cranes in flight amongst pine branches. Tie bars are used to hold the stencil structure, these would be covered over by paste applied by hand or through a second stencil so would not appear on the printed textile. 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.