One of the pasted folkhouse pieces made it into the kakishibu (persimmon tannin) just to see what would happen. Kakishibu and paste can be tricky, because the paste softens when it gets wet and with kakishibu the idea is to wet the piece and let it dry in the sun multiple times. Each dunking and sunning leads to a darker rust-color, and only the side facing the sun takes on color.
Here’s with paste on, after being in the sun:
River washout:
Final result (though it needs a good pressing, sorry about that):
In some places, the paste cracked and left little lines of rust, giving it a bit of a batik crackle. I really like the darkness of the color and the imperfections of the kakishibu in relation to the stencil design.
I am looking forward to combining kakishibu with indigo and working with layers of dye and paste. Maybe offsetting the stencil? Maybe the use of different stencils directly over each other? There’s something to this process–and to katazome as a surface design technique–that I want to explore more fully. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to try it.
Absolutely gorgeous!
Thank you!