Back to the Textile Museum

We went back to the Textile Museum to have a docent explain the Japanese Rozome wax-resist painted textiles we had seen several weeks ago, and immediately following to hear a lecutre from a Professor at Catholic University on the cosmology of the Huari people (these are the pre-Incas in Peru and the subject of another exhibit at the museum). A previous posting discusses the exhibits.

The docent tour was very good and to our surprise attracted about 25 people. It was helpful to have seen the exhibit earlier, and made you realize how much you miss when you simply look at an exhibit on your own.

We had read that this particular technique flourished in 8th century Japan and then was "forgotten" until the 20th. This seemed hard to believe, but now we understood it a little better. In the 8th century (a prosperous one for Japan), a statue of the Great Buddha was unveiled with extraordinary pomp and circumstance, including much in the way of textiles for clothing, banners, etc. After the celebration, all of the textiles were packed away and stored, and the boxes were not discovered and opened until the 1920's. There were thousands of preserved textiles found at that time.

She explained how Japan has always gone through periods of isolationism, followed by periods of trade and contact. The 8th century was a great commercial century, but it was followed by considerable isolation. As wax is not indiginous to Japan, this cut off the importation of wax from China, helping to ensure that the wax-resist technique would be lost.

I am not sure exactly how this technique works, but it appears that a hot wax applied to a fabric will keep paint from bleeding, and that the nature of the wax and the intensity of the heat permits controlled fading if that is what is required. Continual layers of wax, and precise painting, gives the desired result to the accomplished artist. The pieces in the exhibit include wall hangings, standing screens and kimonos of various types of color and design.

The upstairs exhibit of the fabrics found in pre-Inca Peru is also very interesting, and we hoped that the lecture would help us understand some of the imagery by giving us an idea of the world-view of the Huari (also spelled Wari) people. The lecturer is a scholar in the field of Huari culture and anthropology, and had an array of Power Point slides, but was disorganized and off-subject most of the time. Partly reading too quickly, and partly going off paper for hard to understand interpretations of what she wished the slides really showed, we learned very little, except that we don't know a lot (and a lot of what we know is colored by our Christian world-view), and the Huari used to keep their dead ancestors in corners of rooms of their houses (perhaps just their skulls, as decapitation seems to be a standard image in their textiles).

This latter practice may sound a bit weird but, as coincidences continue, I was looking through a book called "Ring of Fire", a companion book to a PBS series on primitive Indonesia, yesterday afternoon, and came upon a picture of a "Bugi Warrior" (hence, boogey man) from the Indonesian Aru Islands, off the coast of Borneo. The caption reads: "Even the bravest warriors are subject to psychic attack, so this man sleeps on the skull of his father as a counter-measure." Perhaps the practice is more widespread than one would think.