Kaga yuzen and Kutani

Kaga yuzen: the bug bite

Yuzen is a resist-dyeing technique for silk, drawn freehand with rice paste before dyeing. It began in Kyoto in the late seventeenth century, and a Kyoto dyer named Miyazaki Yuzensai is said to have brought it to Kanazawa in his later years.

Here it changed. Kyoto yuzen favours bright grounds, embroidery and gold. Kaga yuzen uses five colours — indigo, crimson, ochre, deep green and royal purple — with no gold and no embroidery, and it shades from the outside in, dark at the edge of a petal and pale at the centre. Kyoto shades the other way.

And it paints mushikui: the small dark holes an insect eats in a leaf. Deliberately. A Kyoto dyer paints an idealised flower; a Kaga dyer paints one that has been outdoors.

A single formal kimono can take months and pass through the hands of a dozen specialists. The insect damage is the last thing added, and it is the signature.

Kutani: five colours, laid on thick

Kutani ware began in the 1650s in the Kaga domain, stopped in about 1730, after some seventy-five years, for reasons still argued about, and was revived in the early nineteenth century. Both periods are collected; the early work is called ko-Kutani, old Kutani.

The style is overglaze enamel in gosai — five colours: green, yellow, red, purple and navy — laid on thickly enough that you can feel the design with a fingertip. Where much Japanese porcelain is restrained, Kutani covers the surface and fills the ground. It looks nothing like Arita and it is not trying to.

What to actually buy

A Kaga yuzen kimono is a serious purchase; a dyed silk scarf or a small framed panel is not, and carries the same technique. For Kutani, buy a single sake cup or a small dish rather than a set — the enamel work reads better on one good piece than on six ordinary ones.