Quilt Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East [Hardcover]

Yoshiko Jinzenji (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2003

Quilt Artistry will transform the way that readers think about quilts. Author Yoshiko Jinzenji began quilting after she came upon quilts made by Canada's Mennonite people and was deeply moved by their resonant, sacred quality. The richly minimalist quilts she makes today are as powerful as the works that originally inspired her. Quilt Artistry presents her unforgettable quilt creations in 100 color photos and in 300 black-and-white photos and diagrams. Detailed patterns and instructions are included for all projects shown.

In addition to full-size quilts, Jinzenji demonstrates how to make quilted pillows, clutch purses, necklaces, decorative objects, table mats, tiny miniature quilt "mandalas," even a hammock. There are a total of 90 projects, for everyone from beginners to the most advanced quilters.

Jinzenji is also a superb natural dyer and often makes quilts from fabric or fiber she colors herself, including very subtle and rich bamboo-dyed white silk.

In other quilts she uses antique fabric collected from around the world, and in still others vibrant tropical natural dyes or innovative synthetics such as black metallic cloth created by well-known textile designer Jun'ichi Arai. No matter what the material, her quilts all have a remarkable quiet power. They resonate with a spiritual quality like that of classic North American quilts, but one that is rooted in an Asian, even Buddhist sensibility.

Jinzenji has always wanted to "give something back" to the Western quilting tradition that first motivated her own work, and with this book she is wonderfully successful. Quiltmakers and all others with an interest in textiles or design will find Quilt Artistry as inspirational as it is practical.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

During her 30 years of artisanal quilt making, Jinzenji has synthesized a wide range of cultural styles, from the stitching handiwork of Amish and Mennonite quilts and the patchwork altar cloths of her native Japan to the dyeing traditions of Bali, where she now keeps a studio. In this slim, well-illustrated handbook, she offers readers insight into the multicultural origins of the quilting medium and experienced quilters the secrets of creating their own works through how-to diagrams. Jinzenji also conveys a sense of spiritual portentousness in her approach: "What I am striving for is to bring out and add to the essential textures of the cloth, to create shadows and light, and to find a balance between minimalism and a sense of richness." Incorporating lustrous fabrics, some made by textile designer Jun'ichi Arai, and handmade paper, as well as competing patterns and cross textures, Jinzenji sometimes seems to err on the side of richness over minimalism. Her work succeeds best, however, when it's at its most subtle and clean. "Dew II," for instance, a ribbed, white quilt with flecks of inlaid color arranged in long, broken lines, straddles Hopi and Japanese geometries in a tasteful, restrained manner. And "Sound," with its spare, modern pixels, shimmers subtly. For aficionados of quilting, or those of artful handicrafts in general, this book will offer pleasure and inspiration. 100 color and 300 b&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"During her 30 years of artisanal quilt making, Jinzenji has synthesized a wide range of cultural styles, from the stitching handiwork of Amish and Mennonite quilts and the patchwork altar cloths of her native Japan to the dyeing traditions of Bali. Jinzenji conveys a sense of spiritual portentousness in her approach: 'What I am striving for is to bring out and add to the essential textures of the cloth, to create shadows and light, and to find a balance between minimalism and a sense of richness.' Incorporating lustrous fabrics, some made by textile designer Jun'ichi Arai, and handmade paper, as well as competing patterns and cross textures, Jinzenji sometimes seems to err on the side of richness over minimalism. Her work succeeds best, however, when it's at its most subtle and clean. - Publishers Weekly

"This book is as beautiful as her quilts, and reveals the mystery behind some of the best of her works." -Joe Cunningham, author of Quilting with Style

"The serenity of the chosen textiles presented in such peaceful settings is amplified by her stunning workmanship and enchanting photography." - Yvonne Porcella, founder of Studio Art Quilt Associates

"Yoshiko's work is a rarity even in the world of art-to-wear and its nonwearable textile art relatives: utterly unique." -Dana De Zoysa, Curled Up with a Good Book

"...beautiful, inspiring...The subtler works, those with only a few shades and tones of color are the epitome of sophistication"-Surface Design Journal

"Yoshiko Jinzenji can see the universe in a quilt block." -The Paducah Sun

"It is [a] feast for both the eyes and soul." -The Professional Quilter

"EDITOR'S CHOICE - the latest must have-book for your library." -Quilts With Style

"Inspiration, practical information, and beautiful photography make this book a winner." -Picework

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA (January 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770027567
• ISBN-13: 978-4770027566
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,788,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful., April 29, 2003

By 

Britt Arnhild Lindland (Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quilt Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East (Hardcover)

Yoshiko Jinzenji has made a beautiful book showing her magnificient quilts and pieces of fabric arts.

The book itself, photos, paper, printing, writing, style, is a piece of art. A book you will be happy to own, no matter if you are a quilter or just a book lover. A perfect coffee table book for any home, though this one is so much more than a coffee table book. This book deserves to be read and be looked through again and again.

Yoshiko Jinzenji has been a quilter for a lifetime, and during these years she has developed her own unique and perfect style. We get to know Jinzenji through the pages of the book, both through words and through pictures. We meet her and her quilts in Kyoto, and we meet her in her studio in Bali. The book also have a section on how to make quilts, easy to read, easy to follow the step by step instructions. Jinzenji makes her quilts from ancient fabric collected from around the world, and she makes her quilts from natural dyes in light, clean colors. But no matter what the fabric is, her vibrant quilts all stand out and have all their own story to tell

The highlights in the book though are the pictures. The somewhat clean and stylish picture of a Small Modern Amish quilt displayed on the wall in her Kyoto home, the fantastic puzzle of an uncountable number of small Mandala quilts put together to form a universe in colors, cloths and patterns, the collague of many pictures from scenes around her studio in Bali as inspirations for future quilts.

The way the writing and photos in the book are put together shows the reader a new way to look at the surroundings, and through that a new way to look at life. Or to say it with the words from the foreword of the book, written by textile designer Jun'ichi Arai; I am convinced that Yoshiko Jinzenji's achievements in establishing a new genre in quilting will never be forgotten.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful!, February 9, 2003

By 

K. M. Biagioli (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quilt Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East (Hardcover)

This book is beautifully written and designed. The cover and paper used are artful. Yoshiko Jenzenji shares her passion for quilting in a way that weaves a common thread through cultures, locales, nature, and spirituality. I could feel my heart swell as I read through this book and as I looked at and studied the photographs. This is a book about her quilts and about quilting--but the photography and artistry of its cover and between its covers makes it a special treasure. I am excited to own this book and will be proud to display it. I am so inspired by Yoshiko Jenzenji's quilt work and passion for quilting. I became dizzy with inspiration! I will recommend it to every friend I have--and not all of them are quilters! I would think they would all want to BECOME quilters after experiencing this book. Yoshiko Jenzenji seemed to open her heart and her home with this book. I am thankful to her for sharing her passion and talent with the world!

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite portrait of an exquisite mind, April 16, 2003

By 

Douglas BULLIS (Anaheim, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quilt Artistry: Inspired Designs from the East (Hardcover)

A piece of fabric is the pulse of life is written across our eyes by drape, shape, texture, and hue. Art forms, and perhaps art itself, have their own genetic codes-forms of doubling and redoubling that, as DNA does with the cell, determine a look, a feel, a character, an emotion. Lucky, then, are the pieces of fabric doubled and redoubled by the eyes and hands of Yoshiko Jinzenji. A few snips of color and weave become a mix of art and the irrepressible urge to adorn that make you want to dive off this world and into what you see.

She best articulates the origins of all this in her book's Introduction:

"I have a very clear memory of my first encounter with quilts. It was in Toronto in the winter of 1970, in the furniture section of Eaton's department store downtown. There, surrounded by standardized fluffy bedspreads, were two handmade quilts draped over wooden racks. I went over to them as if drawn by a magnet and took them in my hand, wondering what on earth these handmade quilts were doing in the middle of a display of manufactured goods. The oddity of the combination was stunning. The quilts were made by joining together many small pieces of cloth and then covering the whole with fine hand stitching. Each had a price tag, and I was stunned again to see that they were not much more expensive than the manufactured spreads. Who could have made these, I asked myself, and what had inspired their beautiful handwork

Yoshiko's work is a textile manifestation of the preoccupation with apres-antique and avant-garde that characterizes so much of Japanese culture today. On page 40 she recounts the symbiosis of ancient textiles in the tea ceremony; a scant 7 pages further on were are suddenly confronted with a work made of some of the most interesting cloth ideations of Jun'ichi Arai. Jun'ichi is arguably the most innovative and certainly the most influential textile creative artist working today-the textile equivalent of Issey Miyake's fabrications in his heyday of two decades ago. Jun'ichi has taken the marriage of technology and history further down the road to progeny than any other designer. He also is an astonishingly good and sensitive writer, and his Foreword to Yoshiko's book is so good that it is reproduced below.

Yoshiko, like Jun'ichi, is nothing if not a creative technician who happens to make art. Her text and caption content sums to an amazingly low overall word count given the amount of detail and philosophy it conveys. One reason is the lush plates-many so good they could be enlarged and hung in a gallery devoted to contemporary fine-art photography. Then there are the dozens of step-by-step how-to diagrams that guide the home quilter through the process of emulating Yoshiko's pieces. The readers need not be especially accomplished sewers, either, for despite their complex look, Yoshiko's pieces are really composed of fairly straightforward elements lines and patterns; there's just a lot of them. Any who would re-create one of her works at home needs patience more than proficiency.

Yoshiko is generous enough to pass along step-by-step instructions for a dyeing method she found via experiment in order to accomplish what must be the ultimate coals-to-Newcastle notion in textile history: dyeing white material white. That might seem an exercise in conceit, but the reason goes far back into the wellsprings of Japanese aesthetics. As she tells it,

"I had been making quilts for years from fabrics that I dyed myself with natural dyes when I had a kind of awakening. It was during an exhibition where my work was being shown together with that of a lacquerware artist. When I looked at his pieces, with their simple and beautiful form and their quiet sheen achieved by applying lacquer in careful layers, I thought, what kind of fabric could I make that would have the same sense of power? Finally it came to me, I wanted to find a natural dye that would dye cloth white. . . . In the field of natural dyes white was the one color no one knew how to obtain. For me white was suggestive of the fusuma and shoji sliding doors used to separate Japanese-style rooms, as well as the traditions of sumi ink drawings and calligraphy and even the white sand of Zen gardens."

"Finally I hit on the idea of trying that strange combination of tree and grass, bamboo. Two or three hours later the cloth had been transformed. It was if the silk was a prism sparkling with colors like pink, yellow, and green. It was a white with depths."

Yoshiko's book is a combination of high art and ladle-in-the-dyebath practicality. The many full-plate and even more part-page pictures amply illustrate the first. The drawings and text take care of the latter. With so many active quilters and societies all around the world these days, few would argue that quilting isn't an art form. With Yoshiko's book in hand, anyone interested in quilting, textiles, home design, or fashion design will be inspired to make art of their own. Her 90 specific projects, clear design patterns and detailed instructions can guide just about anyone with enthusiasm and patience to make quilts, pillows, clutch purses, mandalas, spreads, wall hangings, and even a hammock to end all hammocks. Yoshiko's work is a rarity even in the world of art-to-wear and its nonwearable textile art relatives: utterly unique.