wedding obi, unknown maker from Japan

Exhibition Label:
“Flowers, Dragons and Pine Trees: Asian Textiles in the Spencer Museum of Art,” Nov-2005, Mary Dusenbury
Both of these obi (the wide, heavy folded sash worn with traditional Japanese dress), woven about fifty years apart, were designed as part of a woman’s formal wedding attire. Both are products of the Nishijin weaving district in Kyoto, an area still famous today for the quality of its silk woven products.
This obi reveals the pleasure that master weavers in Nishijin took in their newfound ability to design and weave complex, pictorial patterns on the jacquard loom, as well as their interest in Western painterly techniques of shading and the representation of three-dimensional space.
Shortly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Meiji government sent three master weavers from Nishijin to Lyon, France to study the new jacquard looms and to bring this new weaving equipment and knowledge back to Japan. The weaver of this obi had a thorough technical understanding of the jacquard loom and used a variety of weave structures to add
texture and dimensionality to the design.