Connoisseur's Book of Silk Fragments

This album, probably compiled in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, contains fragments of kosode from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. Precedents for compiling albums of textiles can be found among the records of tea ceremony aficionados, who preserved and studied textiles associated with the tea ceremony, such as mountings for paintings and bags for treasured utensils. The identity of the textile connoisseur who owned this album is not known. Since several of the kosode fragments in the album have counterparts among the Nomura collection's screens, it seems likely that the compiler was one of Nomura's contemporaries who took part in the avid textile collecting of the first few decades of the twentieth century.

The fan-folded album is opened to a page spread that features yûzen-dyed textiles on the left side and one shibori-dyed and one embroidered textile on the right. The compiler of the album often labeled the textiles with an educated guess as to date or type. The fragment on the left-hand page that corresponds to the larger textiles shown here is labeled Kanbun Date gire, indicating that the owner of the album believed that this fragment dated from the Kanbun period (1661-73) and was related to the Date daimyo family.

On view from June 7, 2022 – February 20, 2023