With the advent of machine printing techniques in the early Showa Period (1930’s), the proliferation of machine-printed cloth added to the gaiety of the everyday clothing of ordinary people. Already in the second half of the 1800’s, Kyoto had become the first area in Japan to experience the dissemination of the roller printing machine and printing techniques from the West. Screen and other types of printing machines were developed but by the 1930’s, the popularity of this new technique had spread to the extent that “printing machine” was understood to refer to the roller printing machine.
Patterned cloth, which had been so expensive as to be unattainable, became widely available with the mass production of dyeing techniques, enabling women from all social classes to delight in fashionable attire. The current exhibition is an attempt to portray the significance of the roller printing machine during this shift in the Kyoto textile industry. Whenever modernization in the textile industry has been in the spot light, some light has also been shed on the glorious role of roller printing. Unfortunately, mass production became synonymous with the negative reputation of the “cheaply manufactured” product. As a result of this distain, research has largely overlooked the early history of the modern textile industry. In fact, however, the flexible way in which the industry responded to trends and customer tastes and the major contribution roller printing machines made to design trends at the time, are deserving of admiration from those who study the history of industry and textiles and conduct research into the apparel industry.
In this exhibition, we examine the realities surrounding the roller printing machine, from the latter half of the 1800’s to the present, from the perspective of its deserving status. What we have found, hidden in the shadows of the negative images of machine manufacturing are the diligent efforts of printing meisters who worked to develop the technology and the tricks of the trade. In this way, our eyes have been opened to the contributions of not only Kyoto’s much celebrated crafts persons, the Yuzen dyers and Nishijin weavers, but also the printing meisters who were critical to the development and success of Kyoto’s textile industry.
Many skills and techniques which are no longer passed from generation to generation soon fade from public memory. As the demand for roller printing has virtually disappeared, it too is in danger of being forgotten. We hope that this exhibition will inspire a wider appreciation for the significance of dyeing techniques from this period and a renewed interest in research into the significance of roller printing machine dyeing. |
