Japan Developing Linen Fetish

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]IHT: Japanese linen, out of the closet and into the mainstream
Japanese linen, once made almost obsolete by the general preference for the much cheaper Chinese product, is quietly making a comeback..."People are starting to think differently about textiles, and more are buying or using linen in the way Europeans did in the 19th century," said the interior stylist Mika Sonomiya. "Unlike cotton, good linen is expensive but grows more beautiful with time and washing." Sonomiya is a self-professed "laundry fiend" and considers the washing/drying of linen products to be the highest of stress relievers. She insists on 100 percent domestic linen..."It makes sense to support the domestic textile industry, not just for cost purposes but simply because new companies in that field are doing great work." Recognizing the demand for more casual linen, the textile giant Teikoku set up an online linen shop called Teisen where finely woven sheets, towels, pajamas and other sundries bearing the "made in Japan" logo are available. "But the ones to watch are the smaller companies," Sonomiya said. "Hardly anyone knows about them, because they operate on such a small basis and rarely bother to advertise"...more...

Kaori Shoji also wrote this article on vintage clothing in Tokyo for the IHT.

[Taro Toporific]

It turns out this is may be hemp-caused mistranslation...

Date: 8/28/2008 2:00:00 PM
From: William Stonehill
Subject: NBR'S JAPAN FORUM (ECON) Japanese Linen

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/26/style/flinen.php

An interesting article on Japanese "linen" which shows the danger of letting Japanese writers (if this writer is Japanese) submit articles to editors who appear to know very little about Japan, or at least about Japanese cloth.

As far as I know, linen, which is made from flax, is not commercially grown in Japan. So talking about "Japanese linen" is a bit odd. Some people contend that items made out of cotton and hemp can also be referred to as "linen", but this simply is not true. What the author of this article is talking about is "asa" which is a type of hemp, and can be used to make rope as well as cloth. The article also ventures into talking about "Chinese linen" driving Japanese linen off the market, which is another misnomer as the Chinese produce both linen (made of flax) their own version of asa and also have a plant unique to China which produces "rami" the most valuable perhaps of all the linen like cloth. It can be polished and takes a high sheen and can be mistaken for silk. So the question is, what exactly Chinese has been driving what exactly Japanese off the market.

The lack of flax in Japan also goes a long way to explains quite a bit about Japanese artistic oil paints. Linseeds are flax seeds, and as every oil painter knows, cold pressed linseed oil (something chemists tell us is as rare as unicorns lately) is the optimal oil to make oil paint in Japan. Japanese oil paints have never been made out of decent linseed oil it seems, and exhibit (gasp!) such sins as dichromatism.

It would have helped this article to no end if the author had said a few words about what Asa is. The fact that some people are still struggling to make and sell Asa is well worth recording. For many years I have sought out Asa neckties and cloth as gifts for friends overseas as they are fabrics of unique beauty. But, alas, they are not linen.

[Charles]

The lack of flax in Japan also goes a long way to explains quite a bit about Japanese artistic oil paints. Linseeds are flax seeds, and as every oil painter knows, cold pressed linseed oil (something chemists tell us is as rare as unicorns lately) is the optimal oil to make oil paint in Japan. Japanese oil paints have never been made out of decent linseed oil it seems, and exhibit (gasp!) such sins as dichromatism..

Taro, you have no idea how much help that post was to me as an artist. For years I've preferred Japanese oil paints like Holbein (nice name for a Japanese company, eh?) as they seem to be the best quality on the market (at least, compared to the too-expensive French brands). However, one of the interesting problems with these Japanese paints is that they have interesting reflectiveness qualities, you can mix some "medium" (usually a mix of thickened linseed oil and turpentine plus varnish) and the applied paints, when dry, have an astonishing variety of reflectance from matte to shiny. So for years I've made that a primary feature of my paintings. I spend as much time manipulating the reflectance of the paint as the color. Now I know why. Thanks for that little tidbit of obscure but incredibly useful knowledge.

However, I do wonder if this writer really knows his stuff, as cold-pressed linseed oil is commonly available in any local art store here in the US. I've got a half-gallon of the stuff (ooh was that expensive).

[Greji]

However, I do wonder if this writer really knows his stuff, as cold-pressed linseed oil is commonly available in any local art store here in the US. I've got a half-gallon of the stuff (ooh was that expensive).

Charles, you might consider sending a PM to Ojara on this board as she is a professional artist with a studio near Tokyo. You might want to consider sending it in Japanese for her convenience. I sure she can answer your questions, or knows where to get the answer over here.

[Charles]

Charles, you might consider sending a PM to Ojara on this board as she is a professional artist with a studio near Tokyo. You might want to consider sending it in Japanese for her convenience. I sure she can answer your questions, or knows where to get the answer over here.

I'm not sure anyone can get a definitive answer, I could write to Holbein directly, and of course they're unlikely to say "oh yeah, we use the cheap oil in our premium paints." I looked at the Holbein data sheets I have, they claim to use cold-pressed oil. I'm not sure this could even be determined by a chemist with a gas chromatograph. I think I'll ask one of my buddies who is a paint chemist for a major artist's oil paint manufacturer. But of course he'll say "yeah, we use the good stuff and they use the cheap stuff." But his brand is known for being the cheap stuff. Ha.
Anyway, it is of little matter. You can buy the good oil anywhere, even the worst art stores (and Dick Blick is the worst). And you can add as much or as little as you want. I could probably guess at the oil binder content just by playing around on a pallette with a little good oil, now that I know what's happening. I noticed this problem immediately with cheap "student-grade" oils, they always use the crappy cheap oil and have major problems, I stopped using that crap years ago. Unfortunately, cheap oil paints are more widespread than good ones. And the Japanese crank out an astonishing variety of cheap crap for artists. Fortunately, I kinda like paints with crappy qualities, I love a challenge (I did my BFA exhibit in cheap tempera poster paint, ha).

In case anyone cares what this is about (very unlikely), it's a classic problem of oil painting. If you paint with oil paint straight from the tube, it dries to a matte surface, it's got hardly any oil in it, just enough to make it flow from the tube. If you add linseed oil, it dries to a much glossier surface, and takes much longer to dry. So you're constantly trying to get the right amount of oil, not too much or it won't dry, not too little or it isn't glossy. And you can't tell just how glossy it is until it dries. Then there are rules, paint loaded with extra oil is called "fat" and without it is "lean" and the rule is "fat over lean" because lean paint over fat will crack when the fat underlayer dries and shrinks a bit. The oil adds more flexibility to the overlayered paint so it doesn't crack.

This dichromatism is also a major problem in inkjet printing, some of the so-called "archival inks" have problems with variations in glossiness and color in black pigments, due to poor binders (the inkjet equivalent of oil medium). They've worked on this for years, and it's still a problem. It always will be. For this reason (and others), there is not (and never will be) an archival inkjet print. If you want an image to last for hundreds of years, paint it in oils, using proper techniques and quality ingredients.

But this is all an issue for another time. I'm not painting in oils at the moment, I have no studio where I can paint. I'm mostly working in antique photo printing with aqueous pigments. But this little oil info is fascinating to me and I will explore it.. someday.

Oh.. BTW, I should probably plug one of my better pranks, an essay I wrote called "The History of Pigment." The punchline: read the first comment.

[Greji]

I'm not sure anyone can get a definitive answer

An interesting read, but I see that like some many others, you neglected to address the most pressing of issues in the field. That of how you separate the pig from de ment!