Page 29 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

“Ko¯rin patterns” for Lacquer and t extiles Kenzan no doubt inherited from him an awareness of textile
Thus far we have focused almost exclusively on works cre- design. It is somewhat surprising, then, that there are only
ated through the direct application of the tip of a brush to two or three surviving kosode (narrow-sleeved robes) thought

the surface of paper, silk, or ceramic. Yet, as noted above, to have been hand-painted by Kōrin (at least to this author’s
one of the unusual aspects of the Rinpa aesthetic was its knowledge). These would have been destined for clients with
transferability to other media — such as textiles, lacquer- special access to the artist, such as the wife of the lumber

ware, or cloisonné enamel — in which the artist’s brush merchant Fuyuki, Kōrin’s patron in Edo for a short time.
never makes direct contact with the object. Although the More germane, perhaps, to the transmission of the Rinpa
conception of such works typically begins with an idea aesthetic is the process by which textile manufacturers
brushed onto paper by a painter, the realization of the drew on Kōrin’s motifs for their own designs, which were in
final object can be achieved only through the intercession turn replicated and adapted in pattern books aimed at a

of a master artisan. Fragments of so-called Kōrin patterns broader clientele.
(Kōrin moyō) from the Metropolitan’s collection demon- Kōrin’s name, which by the end of his career was
strate how thoroughly the Rinpa design idiom permeated already associated with a distinctive style of rendering floral

the visual consciousness of the general public during the motifs, was later “borrowed” to help sell kimonos. By the
Edo period. Echoing this are designs for lacquerware in the 1710s, publishers of pattern books were labeling certain
Kōrin style executed by artisans who had copied earlier designs “Kōrin” even though they initially wrote it using a
examples or studied design manuals based on Kōrin’s slightly different character for “rin,” as if seeking to avoid
paintings (cats. 5, 6). blatantly pirating the famous name. There seems to have
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Kōrin would not have directly crafted lacquerware been a boom in such fabric designs for several decades that
that bears his name. Instead, he provided drawings that peaked in the 1720s. one characteristic of these textiles is
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craftsmen trained in the technically demanding art of the simplification, abstraction, and flattening of natural

lacquer-making would have executed in three dimensions. forms to an even greater extent than that seen in Rinpa
For example, a triad of elegantly poised deer outlined in paintings (e.g., cat. 57). For example, the Metropolitan
profile by Kōrin (fig. 5) was intended not as a finished Museum recently acquired rare fragments from a silk
composition but as a preparatory drawing for a lacquer kosode probably dating to the second quarter of the eigh-
writing box in the Kōetsu style. Despite the drawing’s teenth century (cat. 56). Flying over a large triangular

extemporaneous quality, we feel the sureness of Kōrin’s expanse of vibrant dyed maroon are plovers (chidori) ren-
brushwork in the perfectly drawn curves of the animals’ dered using a paste-resist dye technique; their feet were
backs and their elegantly stretched or bent legs. The cleverly created with patterns of tie-dyeing. In a juxtaposi-

faces of the deer convey an optimistic glee appropriate for tion characteristic of “Kōrin patterns,” accompanying the
animals with such auspicious connotations. 42 plovers are flowers and grasses associated with autumn:
As noted above, Kōrin’s father, Sōken, was the propri- Chinese bellflowers (kikyō), bush clover (hagi), and mis-
etor of a high-end textile shop in Kyoto, and Kōrin and canthus (susuki). By the 1810s, phrases such as “Kōrin
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a history of rinpa

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