Treasures from John’s Collection: Aobana 青花
Aobana is an extremely fugitive dye–which may lead you to ask, why use it when most of us are seeking the most
colorfast dyes available? That’s a good question, but in this case its very nature makes it perfect for use in
preparing underdrawings on textiles–it will simply disappear along the way and leave no trace.
To use the dye-impregnated paper, just tear off a small piece and place it in a
white saucer with a little water. You’ll find that the dye quickly disperses. You may control the concentration, and
therefore the intensity of the color, by varying the amount of water you allow
to come in contact with the sheet.
An artist will use a mensou-fude to paint an underdrawing directly onto white silk, such as the one shown to the
left, often tracing from a cartoon placed beneath the fabric on a light table.
Ideally, you’ll be painting with the palest shade that still allows you to easily see your
design once dry.
Hand-painted Nagoya-obi depicting aobana, Commelina communis, from John’s private collection.
natural aobana $10
Artists working in shibori techniques will apply aobana through carved stencils using a surikomi- or peony brush. The transferred design acts as a guide when stitching or tying
off the fabric.
below: design transferred to silk
A kimono-length bolt of silk ready to be tied or stitched, using the stencilled
aoban as a guide.
Aobana blooms and is harvested in spring.
The flowers are kneaded and pressed to extract the juice from the petals.
The seeds are sorted out and saved for next year.
A fully tied-off bolt of silk, enough for one kimono. The next step will be to
immerse it in a dye bath, at which point the aobana will be simultaneously washed away. Collection of the author.
I created the piece to the left by first dyeing the silk with turmeric. I then
laid out my sewing pattern pieces on it to determine the boundaries of my
design and sketched in my imagery with the aobana. From there I followed my guides and applied rice paste with a cone (below). I
wasn’t too fussy about following my guide lines since I knew that the underdrawing
would be washed out later.
After the paste dried, I followed up with my other natural colors, washed
everything clean, and finished by sewing the pieces together as you see them
here.
The blue extract is laboriously painted onto hand-made paper, and the saturated
sheet is laid out on an igusa mat to dry.
The last step in preparing the aobana for market is to stack the sheets and trim the edges into neat bundles. The
finished product is called aobanagami (also aobanashi).
natural aobana $10
copyright John Marshall, 2019
