Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/276

 sketched on the white warp threads, wrought in with shuttles or bobbins, and the threads pressed down with a comb. Each piece of the design is made by itself, and connected by occasional cross threads, or brides, as in lace. The fabric is not dear, considering its superior beauty and durability, as compared to the moth-inviting tapestries of the Gobelins and Beauvais, and conventional and classic designs are still followed, the old dyes used, and gold thread lavishly interwoven.

The gold thread employed in weaving brocades and tapestries is either a fine thread wound with gold foil, a strip of tough paper coated with gold-dust, or threads wound with common gold-paper. The fineness and quality of the gold affect the cost of any material into which it enters, and in ordering a fabric or a piece of embroidery one stipulates closely as to the gold-thread employed. The fine gold-wires of Russian brocades are very rarely used, because of their greater cost. The manufacture of gold thread is an open secret, and women are often seen at work in the streets, stretching and twisting the fine golden filaments in lengths of twenty and thirty feet.

The old dyers were as much masters of their craft as the old weavers; and in trying to match the colors in a piece of yesso nishiki, I once went the round of Paris shops and dress makers’ establishments in vain. Nothing they afforded would harmonize with the soft tones of the old dyes. A distinguished American connoisseur, wishing to duplicate a cord and tassel from one of his old lacquer boxes, took it to a Parisian cord-maker. The whole staff looked at it, and the proprietor asked permission to unravel a bit, to decipher the twist and obtain some long threads for the dyer. But with months of time allowed him, he could not reproduce the colors nor braid a cord like the original, nor even retwist the Japanese cord he had unravelled. 260