{"id":1996,"date":"2011-11-04T07:30:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T14:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/?p=1996"},"modified":"2011-10-30T13:28:23","modified_gmt":"2011-10-30T20:28:23","slug":"guest-exhibition-review-mottainai-the-fabric-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/2011\/11\/04\/guest-exhibition-review-mottainai-the-fabric-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibition Notice: Mottainai: The Fabric of Life (Portland)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/japanesegarden.com\/events\/mottainai\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"margin: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.japanesegarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Mottainai-300x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"243\" height=\"324\" \/><\/a>Opening today at the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon is <a href=\"http:\/\/japanesegarden.com\/events\/mottainai\/\"><em>Mottainai: The Fabric of Life, Lessons in Frugality from Traditional Japan<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;This exhibition of antique Japanese folk textiles from the Meiji period  (1868-1912) is comprised of selections from the private collections of<strong> <\/strong>Stephen Szczepanek (suh-PAN-ecks) of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.srithreads.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sri<\/a> in Brooklyn and Kei Kawasaki of <a href=\"http:\/\/gallerykei.jp\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gallery Kei<\/a> in Kyoto. The exhibition demonstrates the remarkable ability of the  Japanese to not only make do with the very little they had, but to make  art with it.<\/p>\n<p>For generations before the \u201cEconomic Miracle\u201d took place in the decades  following World War II, Japan was a poor country. People recycled  everything. Nothing was wasted, and the word \u201c<em>mottainai<\/em>\u201d (waste  nothing!) was a ubiquitous exclamation used by every frugal parent to  warn children about wasting a bite of food or a scrap of cloth or paper.<\/p>\n<p>All of the textiles and garments on view were made from bast fibers  foraged from the forest, or patched and quilted together from  second-hand scraps of cotton garments of city-dwellers who traded their  hand-me-downs with the farmers for rice and vegetables.The exhibition represents a wide variety of traditional textile making and decorating techniques, including <em>sashiko<\/em> stitching, bast fiber weaving and dyeing, and patchwork quilting, the latter referred to as <em>boro<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This short exhibition only runs through November 27 &#8211; so see it while you can. Learn more about the textiles and objects included <a href=\"http:\/\/japanesegarden.com\/events\/mottainai\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opening today at the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon is Mottainai: The Fabric of Life, Lessons in Frugality from Traditional Japan. &#8220;This exhibition of antique Japanese folk textiles from the Meiji period (1868-1912) is comprised of selections from the private collections of Stephen Szczepanek (suh-PAN-ecks) of Sri in Brooklyn and Kei Kawasaki of Gallery Kei [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,4,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1996"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionhistorian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}