Day 145 - Japanese surcoat
April 9, 2019
In gallery 377, I feel as though I've been transported to a different universe, Japanese armor is so unlike anything I've seen before (except, perhaps, in Kurosawa movies). The components are different from European armor, with huge neck and shoulder guards and skirts instead of pants. And the construction is also different: Many pieces appear to be made of literally hundreds of narrow strips of leather, lashed together with silk threads sometimes dyed in vivid shades of coral or turquoise. (But I'm not sure about the construction techniques; this is a place where I miss some explanatory text.) In any case, armor-making must have been an incredibly time-consuming and painstaking effort. I wonder whether Japanese armor was as protective as its European counterparts, and how it compared with the latter in weight.
Today's object is not armor but an early- to mid-19th century surcoat made of imported European wool that appears to be felted, along with silk brocade, and crepe. I am struck by the elegance and simplicity of its design, whose chief element, standing out against the black ground, is a yellow conical form representing a volcano, possibly Mount Fuji, from whose top rises a white curlicue suggesting smoke and flame. I am not sure what the appliqued black circles of various sizes at the bottom of the funnel indicate (boulders?), but their various sizes and the fact that some of them overlap add visual interest. I realize that, for all my entries that talk about my taste for symmetry, what makes the piece work is that it is not symmetrical; the eye reads fom the top of the mountain at the left of center down the long slope at the right of the coat. I think that simplicity and asymmetry may be features of current Japanese fashion design; if so, they have a long tradition.
And, in fact, this coat, I read, is a copy of a famous 17th century surcoat now in the collection of an Osaka museum. So the fashion tradition is even longer than I thought.
Today's object is not armor but an early- to mid-19th century surcoat made of imported European wool that appears to be felted, along with silk brocade, and crepe. I am struck by the elegance and simplicity of its design, whose chief element, standing out against the black ground, is a yellow conical form representing a volcano, possibly Mount Fuji, from whose top rises a white curlicue suggesting smoke and flame. I am not sure what the appliqued black circles of various sizes at the bottom of the funnel indicate (boulders?), but their various sizes and the fact that some of them overlap add visual interest. I realize that, for all my entries that talk about my taste for symmetry, what makes the piece work is that it is not symmetrical; the eye reads fom the top of the mountain at the left of center down the long slope at the right of the coat. I think that simplicity and asymmetry may be features of current Japanese fashion design; if so, they have a long tradition.
And, in fact, this coat, I read, is a copy of a famous 17th century surcoat now in the collection of an Osaka museum. So the fashion tradition is even longer than I thought.
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