[Keisuke Serizawa]
Keisuke Serizawa, a dyeing artist known as a teacher of Samiro Yunoki, who created many dyed works with fresh patterns and colors in a Japanese style, will celebrate the 130th anniversary of his birth in 2025.
Serizawa was born in Shizuoka City in 1895. After graduating from Tokyo Higher Technical School (now Tokyo Institute of Technology) with a degree in industrial design, he began his career in dyeing, focusing on katazome (stencil dyeing), after encountering Muneyoshi Yanagi, his lifelong teacher, and “bingata,” an Okinawan dyeing technique. Later, at the request of Muneyoshi Yanagi, Serizawa became a full-fledged participant in the folk art movement as a dye artist by working on the cover of the magazine “Kogei” (Industrial Arts), which was first published in 1931.
Serizawa first used katazome, a traditional dyeing technique that has been practiced in Japan since ancient times. Katazome is a technique for dyeing cloth using a stencil carved from astringent paper and antistaining glue made mainly from glutinous rice. In general, katazome is produced by a division of labor among craftsmen such as a painter, an engraver, and a dyer, but Serizawa created the katazome technique, in which the entire process from designing and engraving to dyeing is done by Serizawa alone. In 1956, he was recognized as an Important Intangible Cultural Property (Living National Treasure) in the field of katae-dyeing.
Serizawa studied bingata and Japanese dyeing, and his natural talent for creating patterns and a free sense of color led him to create a series of creative works with motifs of plants, letters, people, and landscapes. Serizawa was extremely prolific, and his work was not limited to dyeing, but included kimonos, obis, folding screens, calendars, and decorative designs for architectural structures. In 1976, he was invited by the French government to hold a large-scale solo exhibition in Paris, which was a great success. In the same year, Serizawa was named a Person of Cultural Merit, and in 1984, at the age of 88, he sadly passed away.
Serizawa was widely known as a collector of artifacts from around the world, and Muneyoshi Yanagi once said, “Serizawa understood true beauty.” Serizawa's individuality and creativity are strongly expressed in his collections, and he called his collecting “another creation.” At the exhibition “The World of Keisuke Serizawa, Commemorating the 130th Anniversary of His Birth,” which was held at the Japan Folk Crafts Museum until recently, visitors could see not only Serizawa's works but also his collections, and were fascinated by the simple but sophisticated color combinations, such as light blue and purple. In addition to the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, Serizawa's works can be seen at the Shizuoka City Serizawa Keisuke Art Museum.
Teshigoto Forum's popular Japanese Handwork Calendar is made by printing stencil dyeing by Koichi Odanaka, a student of Serizawa's. The calendar is available for purchase only at this time. The warm and friendly patterns of Japanese handicrafts are somewhat similar to the atmosphere of Serizawa's works, and the desk-top type can be stood on a desk with legs. I bought one for my own home, and I am looking forward to spending my days next year with their works breathing life into my daily life.
Teshigoto Forum's Japanese Handwork Calendar
https://www.shokunin.com/en/teshigoto/calendar.html
The Japan Folk Crafts Museum
https://mingeikan.or.jp/collection_series/serizawa_keisuke/?lang=en
Shizuoka City Serizawa Keisuke Art Museum
https://www.seribi.jp/English%20panhu.pdf
References
https://www.seribi.jp/serizawa.html
https://mingeikan.or.jp/special/ex202409/
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8A%B9%E6%B2%A2%E9%8A%88%E4%BB%8B
https://www.samiro.net/notebook2/mingei03.html
