Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/277

 Velvet-weaving is one of the old arts, but it was accomplished by the most primitive and laborious means, and the fabrics, dull and inferior to foreign factory velvets, do not rank among the more characteristic productions of Japanese looms. Kioto's painted velvets are unique, however, and charming effects are obtained by painting softly-toned designs on the velvet as it comes from the loom, with all the fine wires still held in the looped threads. The painted parts are afterwards cut, and stand in softly-shaded relief upon the uncut ground-work.

The crape guild of Kioto is as large, and commercially as important, in this day, as the brocade guild, whose members rank first among manufacturers. All crape is woven in tans, or lengths of sixty Japanese shaku, two and a half shaku being equal to an English yard. On the loom this material is a thin, lustrous fabric, hardly heavier than the gauze on which kakemonos and fan mounts are painted. It is so smooth and glossy that one cannot discover the smoother warp and twisted woof threads, alternately tight and loose, which give it its crinkly surface. When finished, the web is plunged into a vat of boiling water, which shrinks the threads and ensures the wrinkled and lustreless surface. Once dried the tans are tied like skeins, and lying in heaps, look like so much unbleached muslin. Crape must be dyed in the piece, and stretched, while damp, by bracing it across with innumerable strips of bowed bamboo. In the bath the pieces shrink from one-third to one-half in width, and a full tenth in length, but the more they shrink the more cockled is the surface. When finished the tan may measure from seventeen to twenty-four yards in length, but weight and not measure determines its value, and the scales are used instead of the yard-stick.

While the Chinese weave only the original Canton crape, with its heavy woof and firmly twisted threads, 261