(b) EXAMPLE OF TIED AND DISCHARGED WORK
PLATE IV.
Chapter XV
STENCILS AND STENCILLING
DIRECT APPLICATION OF COLORS
History.—During the last few years a great deal of attention has been paid to the manufacture and use of stencils for decorating textiles, not only by craft workers of different kinds, but also by art teachers in private and public schools.
The art is not a modern one, even in this country, for I have seen and worked with a series of very interesting stencils cut in brass, which were owned in Philadelphia by the famous old physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, over a hundred years ago, and were used in his family for marking linen, as well as for decorating homespuns and paper.
The real home of the art, however, is Japan, where, for over three hundred years, stencils have been in common use, largely replacing the wood blocks used in other countries, for decorating the common cotton goods, towels, head coverings, and the like of the lower classes, and also for ornamenting, where embroidery was not desired, the beautiful silks and satins of the wealthy.
Ever since Japan has been opened to the world travelers have been telling wonderful stories of the great skill of the natives in this beautiful art. According to some writers, as soon as a child is born it is given a nickname, and with it, as a sort of totem, a design—a flower, for instance, for a girl—a tree or an animal for a boy—and the like. This design, worked out carefully, after due criticism from all the family elders, is drawn on brown paper and then carefully cut out with a sharp knife by some member or friend of the family. And this stencil is then sent to the local dyer to be used in dyeing the infant’s clothes. This same design, or a modification of it, is attached to the person through life, as his or her own private pattern, and whenever new clothes are needed they are dyed after this same pattern.
Japanese Stencils.—Paper.—It is a common fact that the very first thing noticeable about Japanese stencils, whether brought from some dyehouse in the interior, or whether made more or less mechanically, for the American market, to be sold to students or craftsmen, is the quality of the paper. It is thin, hardly heavier than ordinary writing paper, but exceedingly tough and strong, and cuts very easily, without tearing. It can occasionally be obtained from importers in sheets, and even better qualities can be secured, from among a mass of old stencils, by finding some which have been only partially cut or used up, and carefully cutting out from them the unused portions where these are large enough for the purpose.
