Japanese Textiles

Colors Alive

Delicately transforming Nature... The subtle colors She enfolds are numerous. Her lands offer us hues in infinite variety. The colors She reflects move our hearts; somehow we want to be clad in them, somehow we want to be one with them. For more than 1,200 years people have bowed to this desire, dyeing and weaving fibers with Nature's pigments. Color is light, color is life, color is sensibility... Now, please sense its breathtaking beauty in the textile works of two National Living Treasures, presented to you on the following pages.
	Fukumi Shimura Brilliant textile artist who dyes and weaves with the raw life of colors she extracts from plants.			Hyôji Kitagawa Heir to the ancient sense of color passed down to the present through the tradition of court textiles.