The Dyer's Art in Japan: Homage to Jack Lenor Larsen

LongHouse Reserve Virtual Lecture Series The seminal book The Dyer’s Art published in 1976 by Jack Larsen, Alfred Buhler, and Bronwen and Garret Solyom was a mind-shifting catalyst in textile studies, akin to Edward’s Said’s Orientalism published two years later, awakening Westerners to political and cultural realities of the world beyond the West. Larsen and Buhler brought attention to the resist-dyeing art of greater Asia, cultures around the Mediterranean Sea, Africa, the Americas, and the Far East. The remarkable extant textile examples from the 7th and 8th centuries Japan – Emperor Shōmu’s (701–765) treasures – have been housed and thus preserved in Shōsō-in at Tōdaiji Temple in Nara, the ancient capital of Japan. Yoshiko will present colorful, less-familiar Japanese resist-dying traditions up to the current time, including kyokechi, itajime, katazome, shibori, and kasuri of the Imperial court, the Shogunate court, merchants, entertainers, and common folk.  A link for "The Dyer's