November 4, 2009 - January 10, 2010
Heaven on earth for lovers of beautiful threads. Here they are made of silk and sometimes gold. It is indeed a wonderful journey of discovery the fascinating scenes of the
great roller woven on a French Jacquard loom by Master Yamaguchi, who
died in 2007 at age of 106. I felt a deep emotion in front of his picture, as if he was still alive, selecting his tangles of all sorts of colors. I stayed long minutes admiring his book with the preparatory drawings and silk samples. Large skeins protected by windows appeared to me as invaluable stones of a great jeweler. For your intention, I you have collected fragments somewhat impressionistic of this master piece. To view them I invite you to click on the cover of the book below. The fineness and precision of the weaving make each character and each element of nature alive. 
The “Tale of the Genji” (Genji Monogatari),
written by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady of honor at the imperial court of
Heian (now Kyoto), is one of the most important iconographic sources in
Japan. A mainstay of Japanese imagination, the novel, written a
thousand years ago, has crossed the ages and cultures to join the
universal literary patrimony, thanks its extreme refinement and
modernity...
It has spawned the Genji-e (the “pictures of Genji”), a
pictorial movement in itself. Depicted on all sorts of media - scrolls,
albums, foiled screens, fans, kakemonos - and in various styles, the
Genji-e allows the novel to be read as a figurative expression.
To reproduce the painted scenes from Genji Monogatari
or “Tale of Genji”, dating from the Heian Period (794-1185) and kept at
the Museum of Nagoya and Tokyo museum Goto in weaving, Master Itarô
Yamaguchi, born of a family of silk weavers in the Nishijin district of
Kyoto and honoured in this exhibition, used the Jacquard loom. Invented
in Lyons, introduced in Japan during the Meiji era (1868-1912), it
revolutionized the art of weaving both in Europe and Asia.
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