I have always loved the traditional Japanese farm house architecture. I loved finding this image at flickr of Shirakawa-go buried in snow by tsuda. Fortunately the Gassho-Zukuri of the Gifu Prefecture has been preserved in large part because of it’s identity as an important part of the Japanese cultural heritage. The village of Shirakawa-go in Gifu — made of mostly Gassho-Zukuri — was added to the World’s Heritage List in the mid 1990′s.
The steep pitched A-frame gable roofs are thickly thatched. Like much traditional architecture in Japan the construction is without nails, relying on the architecture of often complex joints and rope binding. The shape of the roof and it’s insulating materials are adaptations of the traditional Japanese farmhouse to the climate requirements of this region. The space in the roof — often divided into 2 or even more extra “floors” — were commonly used for sericulture. The spaces were well adapted to the labor and space intensive raising and processing of silk worms and the coccoons. The silk production was a very important part of these farmers’ income as it was work that could be continued through most of the year while farming in these areas was confined to a pretty short season.
Sometimes found with the name fundoutsunagi, this is a design that dates at least to the Nara period (645-794), like the shippō design. It has been used in woven textiles such as twills and brocades, along with dyed textiles and sashiko. I have tried this one successfully using ori-nui shibori (stitched resist) and am currently working on a piece of linen to execute it in awase-nui shibori (stitched resist that stitches through two parallel folds of cloth to produce a pocket between them—commonly used to execute a shippō design element).
The design and the name come from the shape of one of the traditional counterweights used on scales in Japan. Fundo literally means “weight” and tsunagi means “link”. I have also seen shippō written as shippō-tsunagi.
- fundo-tsunagi on indigo
(12×12 pixels)
- fundo-tsunagi with transparent background
(12×12 pixel)
- fundo-tsunagi on indigo
(24×24 pixels)
- fundo-tsunagi with transparent background
(24×24 pixel)
- fundo-tsunagi with indigo background
(48×48 pixel)
- fundo-tsunagi with transparent background
(48×48 pixel)
- fundo-tsunagi with indigo background
(96×96 pixel)
- fundo-tsunagi with transparent background
(96×96 pixel)
- two tone grey fundo-tsunagi background pattern
(96×96 pixel)
If some of the images appear blank—just a thin line frame around nothing—then your browser (most likely IE) has an issue displaying transparent .png files. The image is there, right click on the “empty” box and “Save Picture As” or “Save Target As”.
This pattern is from a traditional Japanese design called shippō or “seven-treasures”. The interlocking circles of shippō are said to represent the seven treasures of Bhuddism. Similar linked circle designs are found in many cultures through-out the world. The shippō or shippō-tsunagi(lit. linked seven tresures) design has been used as a motif in Japanese textile decoration since at least the Nara period (645-794). It is quite possible it was in use long before that, but there are few surviving samples of textiles from before then. A piece of fabric exists in the Shōsō-in collection with a similar shippō design done in shibori.
p. Shippō motifs are used in all forms of textile decoration, and are often used as an all over background pattern in a subtle color shift from the ground color, with the main designs layed above. This particular variant of the shippō motif is based on a stencil found in the excellent book Carved Paper – The Art of the Japanese Stencil.
- shippō on indigo
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- shippō with transparent background
(20×20 pixel)
- shippō with indigo background
(40×40 pixel)
- shippō with transparent background
(40×40 pixel)
- shippō with indigo background
(60×60 pixel)
- shippō with transparent background
(60×60 pixel)
If some of the images appear blank—just a thin line frame around nothing—then your browser (most likely IE) has an issue displaying transparent .png files. The image is there, right click on the “empty” box and “Save Picture As” or “Save Target As”.
