What Is Katazome?
© John Marshall
(reprinted with permission) Katazome is a form of paste resist surface design. That is, a paste made from very sticky ingredients (in this case rice flour), that is pushed through a stencil to define a pattern on a piece of white yardage. Wherever the paste sticks to the cloth, it will resist, or prevent, any color from staining that spot. So the rice paste is resisting the color to create a design on the fabric. First a design is transferred to a piece of hand-made mulberry paper called "shibugami". Shibugami has been treated with persimmon tannin and smoked as a preservative, and has a deliciously nutty aroma to it. The design is cut into the shibugami using a very sharp traditional knife and a variety of hole punches. Silk netting is later attached to the front side during the lacquering process. Notice how the areas that have been cut away allow the paste to go through the stencil and stick to the cloth, and how the paper portion of the stencil blocks the paste, forming the basic design on the fabric. Since this is a repeating stencil, it is very important to match up the pattern exactly as the stencil is moved along during the pasting process. The stencil is used repeatedly in this manner, eventually covering the entire cloth with the paste design, as you can see happening below. Notice the two diamond shaped areas of paste down toward the lower right. I'll be pointing these out again later. The cloth is stretched up with a set of wooden clamps and bamboo sticks called "harite" and "shinshi". The colors are applied one at a time, this is called "irosashi". All the colors I use come from natural sources such as plants (indigo, gardenias, and onion skins to name a few), insects (cocheneal and lac), and minerals (such as dirt and iron rust). Each is applied a minimum of three times to build up depth of color. (Chemical dyes may be substituted for the natural dyes following the manufacturer's recommendations for application.) At this stage I stop to take a look at how well the colors are socializing with one another. In this particular case, I've decided the tone of the conversation is a bit more heated than I would like, so I've decided to pacify the party with a light wash of persimmon juice, a yellow tone that will calm things down a bit. After all of the basic colors have been applied, it is
