Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Jacket (Hanten)
Not on view
The extraordinary variety of silk fabrics pieced together to form this hanten, a jacket worn under a kimono, is a testimony to the skill of its maker. The fragments—many of which originate in the Edo period—are of interest in themselves, as they represent nearly every type of textile technique employed in Japan, some of which demanded great expertise. For instance, the method of creating minute, rice-paste resist-stenciled motifs (komon katazome) on silk or hemp is especially difficult to perfect. Because of the value of both the individual fragments and the jacket as a whole, the owner might have been a townsman (chōnin) for whom the symbolic connotations of longevity associated with the act of recycling had a particular resonance. The same tradition of “reusing”can be observed in several areas of Japanese textiles, including Buddhist vestments (kesa) and farmer’s
jackets.
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