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The Kin'un Emaki | Vintage Japanese Fukuro Obi Tapestry, Nishijin Kinran Gold, Edo Townscape Procession
€750
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Product description
The whole of Edo, woven into a single Fukuro Obi. The most complex textile in the collection.
The Kin'un Emaki is a vintage Japanese Fukuro Obi tapestry — a full double-layered ceremonial Fukuro Obi, woven in Kyoto by the Nishijin tradition at the apex of its craft and now mounted by Renaras as a permanent work of hanging art. It is the most compositionally ambitious piece in the Woven Dynasty collection and the most technically demanding to have produced: a dense, multi-layered Nishijin (西陣) weave in which an entire feudal city lives — temples with upswept rooftiles rising above wooden merchant quarters, samurai in formal procession, traders at market stalls, the full human texture of Edo life rendered in silk thread at a scale and fidelity that no other textile medium can approach. Above and between the figures, Kin'un (金雲) — the golden clouds of classical Japanese pictorial art — move across the composition in woven metallic gold, the same clouds that appear in the great Rakuchu-Rakugai folding screens of the Momoyama and Edo periods, the convention by which Japanese painters separated one scene from the next and simultaneously unified everything under the same gilded sky. Here they are not painted but woven: each gold cloud is built from Kinran (金襴) metallic thread worked into the dense silk ground, the gold catching and releasing light as the eye moves across the surface, the composition never entirely still.
The Fukuro Obi is the highest grade of Japanese Obi — a doubled, tubular construction of exceptional weight and complexity, woven on the most sophisticated of the Nishijin drawlooms to produce a textile that is structurally different from any other silk: two complete layers of weave, face and lining, produced simultaneously on the same loom, the patterns on the outer face woven at a density and resolution that no single-layer textile can achieve. A Fukuro Obi of this pictorial complexity — figures, architecture, landscape, Kin'un clouds, all in correct perspective and proportion, all in multiple colours with metallic thread — is the product of a master Nishijin weaver working at the absolute limit of what a drawloom can be made to do. The compositional density alone — the number of individual warp and weft threads required to render the miniature figures at the resolution visible in this piece — places it at the far end of what Nishijin production has ever achieved. The tradition that produced it took three centuries to develop and is, at this level, no longer in commercial operation.
In a contemporary European interior, the Kin'un Emaki is a statement of the most considered kind — not the statement of someone who wishes to impress, but of someone whose knowledge runs deep enough that a textile of this quality speaks for itself without requiring explanation. The gold and earth palette — metallic Kinran, warm ochre, deep indigo, forest green, the particular complex brown of aged silk — works with aged brass, dark walnut, velvet, natural stone, lacquer, and the full range of rooms furnished for permanence rather than fashion. It belongs in a principal room: a library with serious books, a drawing room with an open fire, a dining room where the walls have always held something worth looking at. The collector who acquires the Kin'un Emaki is not decorating a room — they are completing one.
One Edo. One gold sky. Woven once.
Dimensions Approx. 100 × 35 cm displayed (confirm exact)
Fabric Vintage Fukuro Obi — double-layered Nishijin pure silk
Technique Dense Nishijin pictorial weave with Kinran metallic gold thread; Kin'un cloud passages in woven gold
Motif Edo feudal townscape — temples, samurai, merchants; Kin'un golden clouds
Colourway Metallic Kinran gold, earth tones, multicoloured figurative miniatures (Dark and Light variants — confirm current stock)
Format Hanging tapestry — mounted Fukuro Obi. Kakejiku hanger sold separately.
Provenance Authentic Japanese vintage Nishijin Fukuro Obi, sourced from verified estate collections
Condition Vintage — extremely rare. No restock.
Care Keep away from direct sunlight. Do not wet clean.
Shipping Fully insured, worldwide delivery. Certificate of textile origin included.
Display It Properly: The Renaras Kakejiku Hanger
The Kin'un Emaki is designed to be displayed on the Renaras Artisan Kakejiku Hanger — the traditional Japanese Kakejiku scroll-mounting system, sold separately.
For the Light variant, the Natural Wood finish — Hinoki and maple tone — keeps the display clean and places the gold of the Kin'un clouds at the centre of attention. For the Dark variant, the Tea Colour finish — deep Shibui stain, evocative of the aged woods of traditional Japanese joinery — frames the darker ground with complete authority and gives the piece the gravity it was made to carry. The slotted dowel grip holds the Obi without adhesives or pins, preserving the integrity of the vintage silk across every thread.
Specifications
ConditionExcellentColorsGrey, Mint, Green, Gold, Multi ColorMaterialmaterial-silkNumber of items1OrientationPortraitArt sizeLargeHeight100 cmWidth30 cm
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Amsterdam, NetherlandsOn Whoppah since January 2026 • 0 sales