Gomotsu Jodai Senshokumon
Sixth to Eight Century (A.D.)
Dyed and Textile Fabrics in the
Imperial Household Collection, Tokyo
Imperial Household Museum

 
Imperial Household Museum:
A series of numbered folios of plates (some folding) reproducing items in the Imperial Household Collection and Shosoin Collection. The plates are housed in cardboard folding cases (19 x 13 1/2 in - 47 x 34.5 cm). Folio No. 9 was published in 1928 and is titled Gomotsu Jodai Senshokumon. This folio contains four color plates (#47-50). Each plate has Japanese and English descriptive information on a thin sheet that is tipped to the outside edge of the plate. A listing of the contents in Japanese and English are tipped into the inside of the cardboard folding case.

Plate sizes.

• Plate 47 has two folds out and measures 65 cm (21 + 23 + 21) x 45.5 cm.
• Plates 48-50 are single sheets and measure 33.5 cm x 45.5 cm

Tipped in Contents Listings (Japanese & English)

    
    
    


Contents (per sheets attached to each plate).


47.  Brocade Banner Decoration with Purple Brocade Border
            The Shosoin Collection
  An end decoration of a streamer attached to a big banner,
being similar to that shown on Plate VII, though differing
in size and details of the design.  Such examples as these
big and superb designs serve to reveal high stage of 
development reached in the textile art of he Nara period.
  The decoration is repeated on the other side of the brocade
of the same design and a fawn in the centre and an addition
of a narrow strip of brocade complete the design on one side
Remnant of the body of the banner, held between brocade 
decoration, may still be seen in the reproduction.
    


48.  Printed Ashiginu with Flowers and Bird Pattern
             The Shosoin Collection.
  The design, in it's composition, approaches a 
painting showing a freedom of a pictorial decoration.
The lower part of the bird design from another piece
has been tentatively placed on the missing part in
the reproduction so as to convey a fuller shape of 
the bird in the design.
    


49.  Purple Brocade with Conventional Design
         Tokyo Imperial Household Museum
  The ground, as well as the design, of this brocade is
wrought with the woof only, as in the case of yamato
nishiki of the present day.  A similar brocade is
found used on the borders of the screens with calligraphy
formed with birds' feathers, which are still preserved 
in the Treasure-house Shosoin.
    


50.  Pendant Decoration of "Ungen" Ra
     Tokyo Imperial Household Museum.
  Evidently fragments of pendants attached to
a small banner.  Silk gauze dyed in ungen design
by the kyokechi method and cut into narrow strips, 
four of which had been sewed together side by side to 
from a long strip to serve as a decoration of a banner.