The Art of Sericulture in Edo-Era Japan

MAEKAWA, Bunrei 前川文嶺, artist.

Two beautifully illustrated scrolls with paintings on silk & mounted on paper, entitled on upper cover of inner box “Yōsan no zu” 養蚕之図 [“Sericulture Illustrated”].

Two preliminary images in gold & 17 finely painted continuous images of the steps of producing silk from silkworms & the weaving of silk fabrics, all finely painted on silk and inlaid on thick luxury paper with richly speckled borders of gold, reverse sides decorated with square-cut gold. Two scrolls (both 455 x 6360 mm.), outer front endpapers of heavy silk brocade with images of silk moths, cocoons, & mulberry leaves, wooden inner core rollers. Japan: at end of second scroll (in trans.): “Summer 1900, Bunrei” with the artist’s seal.

Two unusually large illustrated scrolls created by the well-known Kyoto-based Shijō school painter Maekawa Bunrei (1837-1917). A disciple of Matsumura Keibun, Maekawa is best known for his bird and flower paintings. These two scrolls depict in great detail and with considerable artistry all the steps of the art of sericulture, from the rearing of silkworms to the final luxury product. Our scrolls celebrate one of Japan’s greatest rural pre-industrial manufactures of the Edo era. All the scenes take place in the countryside.

Both scrolls begin with eerie Chinese-style paintings on white silk using gold pigment; the first scroll shows a woman winding thread onto a bobbin, and the second scroll begins with a woman weaving with silk threads. The women seem to float in the air, surrounded by clouds of golden mist.

The scenes in the first scroll, presented in an interconnected and continuous fashion, depict the steps of making silk at home. The steps shown in this first scroll are: incubating and rearing the eggs produced by silk moths; chopping the mulberry leaves; feeding leaves to the hatched larvae on shelves placed in the sun for warmth; gathering and preparing the mulberry leaves for consumption by the larvae; maintenance of the shelves holding the worms with their mulberry leaves in a warm environment; preparing and encouraging the mature larvae to spin their silk cocoons by placing shrub branches on the shelves; gathering the developed cocoons from the branches; steaming the cocoons to kill the pupae; and unreeling the cocoons by bringing together several filaments to form one continuous uniform strand of silk.

The second scroll presents the processes to manufacture silk fabrics. It begins with a scene depicting the cleaning and drying of the raw silk, plying several threads together to obtain yarn of the required strength and thickness, and winding the yarn onto reels and spools; silk merchants judging and weighing the silk; placing the silk into large bundles to be carried on horses and carts to dyeing houses, where the silk threads are further cleaned, processed, and dyed in large vats dug into the ground; drying the dyed silk outdoors in the sun; spinning the silk for weaving; and the actual weaving using a variety of methods and three types of manually run looms. The final scene depicts three women admiring and selecting amongst the finished fabrics.

Minor foxing; preserved in a wooden box within a wooden box. Maekawa has used a variant seal inside the top of the inner box.

Price: $12,500.00

Item ID: 11347