Description

Serizawa used the traditional Japanese hand-dyed stencil method, commonly used in textile production, to create this print. In this technique, a stencil is placed on top of a sheet of paper and paste is brushed over the entire surface, passing through the cutout areas of the stencil onto the paper. When the paste has dried and the stencil is removed, the artist applies dye color to the entire sheet. After the dye has dried, the paste is washed away. The paper remains uncolored where the paste has been removed (the dried paste acts as a resist, preventing dye from seeping into the paper), but the dye has transferred to the paper in the areas that were covered by the stencil when the paste was originally applied. Multiple stencils are often used to produce one image, as a means of applying more than one color and/or form.