( Twitter Nonsense Goes Here )So, the kimono exhibit. We got up Saturday morning, rented a minivan since there were 5 of us from Pittsburgh making the drive over, and headed out. Picking up the van got us off to a later start than hoped, so we made the drive there nonstop (also non-coffee *tear*). And while still too large for my personal tastes, a Toyota Sienna is a pretty cushy ride.
Between Slow-Agency-Is-Slow and a patch of construction along the route, we got to the museum half an hour behind schedule, hungry, and thirsty. Collected Kaitou from where she'd perched outside to knit while she waited for us, and grabbed some snack-type foods to hold us over until after we'd seen the exhibit.
The line to see the kimono wound through a large room with first a display of Japanese pottery, and then panels explaining Kubota-san's history, and examples of each various step in the process of dying and texturing the silks used. It felt a bit like being in an amusement park's "mickey maze," only with much better things to look at while waiting, especially since at the end of the line a museum worker played gatekeeper and let only about 10 - 12 people into the exhibit room at a time.
The first room contained 10 non-related kimono, many of them shown at the bottom of
this page - numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9 I remember for sure. There were three kimono
not shown here, which depicted different interpretations of Mount Fuji, from very stylized to practically photo-realistic (or as close as you can get to it using dyes on silk).
Then came the second room, with the Symphony of Light... thirty of these oversized kimono, hung almost sleeve to sleeve, with an overall design that flowed from one onto the next and through different times of day from autumn into winter. I can't even begin to describe how incredible they were. I got about 10 kimono into the panorama and had tears running down my face, from the scope and beauty of them all.
Browsed the gift shop after, walked a few blocks to check out
the studio of a friend from Twitter (okay okay, so mostly her cat is a friend of
my cat, but you get the idea), and had a
very good lunch at a restaurant called "The Iris" before heading home again.