Shimacho 1
Wafuworks (Blogspot 2015)

The image to the left, courtesy of wafuworks is of a page of a shimacho.

Shimacho (Japanese) means stripe book. They are fabric sample books. They have a number of purposes. Sometimes they are  commercial samplers. Sometimes records, created by weavers, of their designs.

Whatever the source of this one, it is fabulous. It’s inspired me to make my own sample books, made from fragments of undeveloped artworks. I’ve already started by making little encaustic butterfly pages (narrow landscape pages) of Plaster of Paris bandages (Mod Roc). These are like wafers and fragile.

Encaustic grounds in preparation, with blue note

I’ll call them Glimpses. As they are glimpses of ideas (walks taken and abandoned where the path has petered out).

When I saw the above image I couldn’t help thinking that the little diagonal strip of blue on the bottom right resembled the strip of blue in the image of my latest encaustic works-in-progress that I posted in my last blog. Uncanny, that. Another sort of glimpse – of blue sky.

A modern take on shimacho are the Keep Books (altered decommissioned library books) of Jody Alexander.

You’ll find lots of shimacho and other types of Japanese folk textiles at Sri Threads.

The art of thrift.

We are having new carpetting set down. The sitting room was re-carpetted today. The carpet fitters took up the old carpet and sliced it into strips before bagging it for disposal.

Funny how life and art can run parallel with each other.

Ann