Shishu embroidery

GION SAITO mainly employs the technique called kyo-nui sewing.

Kyo-nui sewing originally expanded throughout Kyoto as a result of the establishment of the Oribe no Tsukasa (Bureau of Textiles), a gathering of shishu embroidery artisans from throughout the imperial court, when Heiankyo was constructed. Its origins are believed to reside in the shishu embroidery applied particularly to the attire of the noble class and the weaponry of the warrior class. The most famous examples include costumes for nogaku theater that was popular from the Muromachi era onward. They exhibit a level of luxurious and gorgeous shishu embroidery that is simply unthinkable today.

Additionally, kyo-nui sewing is known for employing a wide array of threads including gold, silver, and silk threads and for its elegant shishu embroidery, and boasts over 15 types of methodologies. The technique called the watashinui float stitch, which was typical of the Momoyama era, was particularly used in noh costumes and such from the medieval era of Japan onward. It is known for its three-dimensional, protruding patterns.

This is an effect that emerges from stringing a thread right through from one tip of the pattern to the other, minimizing shishu embroidery that employs the approach of winding the thread around the back side of the fabric, and instead rendering the pattern with float stitches that stay on one side of the fabric surface. It is also a technique that was brand new at the time, and evokes the background of the rich and tolerant Momoyama culture. Today, it is almost impossible to find any artisans who can accurately reproduce the watashinui float stitch technique of those times. GION SAITO shishu embroidery artisans who strive to revive for today’s times the ancient techniques and art they have learned on their own through intense practice, and who find motivation and joy in questing for those days of yore, are still enmeshed in journeys of trial and error, instilling life in a single sheet of fabric with each careful stitch.