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Lot Essay
When preparing for a Noh performance, the actor carefully selects the mask and ensemble of garments appropriate to his role. Age, gender and status are signaled to the audience by the type of costume, coloring, composition and so on. Karaori (literally "Chinese weave") brocade robes are worn to represent women of high rank and women possessed by spirits. Examples like this one, without the color red (ironashi) in the decorated surface, were for older women. It has been suggested that the design and muted, cool colors of this robe made it suitable for the play Kinuta (The fulling block), in which the main character, a lonely woman in a small village on an autumn night, beats on a wooden block, wishing that the plaintive sound would reach her husband who is away in the capital.
The seven autumn grasses are among the most enduring of Japanese motifs, and the most poignant. Miscanthus, chrysanthemums, bush clover, Chinese bellflowers, pinks and other autumnal plants and grasses in eight different colors of silk thread create a rich pattern on the brown and dark blue checkered ground of this robe. The ground consists of large, alternating ikat-dyed blocks (dangawari) of color.
Noh robes are never identical, but there is a very similar robe, dating from the 17th century, in the collection of the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya. See Tokugawa Art Museum, ed., Noh Masks and Costumes: Treasures from the Tokugawa Art Museum, no. 9 (Otsuka Kogeisha, 1994), pl. 115. For an 18th-century karaori with autumn grasses in the Tokyo National Museum, see Sharon Sadako Takeda, Miracles and Mischief: Noh and Kyogen Theater in Japan, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2002), cat. no. 66, p. 100.
This robe is in exceptionally good condition.
The seven autumn grasses are among the most enduring of Japanese motifs, and the most poignant. Miscanthus, chrysanthemums, bush clover, Chinese bellflowers, pinks and other autumnal plants and grasses in eight different colors of silk thread create a rich pattern on the brown and dark blue checkered ground of this robe. The ground consists of large, alternating ikat-dyed blocks (dangawari) of color.
Noh robes are never identical, but there is a very similar robe, dating from the 17th century, in the collection of the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya. See Tokugawa Art Museum, ed., Noh Masks and Costumes: Treasures from the Tokugawa Art Museum, no. 9 (Otsuka Kogeisha, 1994), pl. 115. For an 18th-century karaori with autumn grasses in the Tokyo National Museum, see Sharon Sadako Takeda, Miracles and Mischief: Noh and Kyogen Theater in Japan, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2002), cat. no. 66, p. 100.
This robe is in exceptionally good condition.