Over 700 kimonos in Caraglio

Inaugurated at 6.08 am this morning - sunrise time - with a welcome to the sun followed by a Japanese breakfast, a Chamber Orchestra concert, and the official presentation, the exhibition Y KIMONO NOW runs from today July 23rd to Sunday November 5th 2017. Hosted at Filatoio di Caraglio, the exhibition shows over 100 original kimonos, offering a trip to the Japanese world, culture and aesthetics which still is a source of inspiration for art, graphics, design and fashion today.

The choice of the exhibit venue is not accidental: in 1868, when Japan opened to the world with the Meiji restoration, Italian silk weavers had already been living in the country for several years to purchase Japanese silkworms, the only ones to resist pebrina, a disease that prevents the worms to produce the precious thread. Thus Italian silk weavers in Japan were the first to establish an important relationship with the country and, among Piedmontese silk weavers, some came from Caraglio.

The exhibition - Consolata Pralormo's design and curated by Nancy Stetson Martin with Fabiola Palmeri – is a great show-case for Japanese life, traditions, celebrations and landscapes thanks to decorative motifs, colors, refined representations of flowers and leaves, insects and animals, mountains and waves.

Through 4 sections devoted to seasons, landscape, water and art respectively, the exhibition highlights the stimulating beauty of Kimonos and Japan, which has always been a place of extraordinary evocative power and a reference point of beauty and aesthetics to the West. The same aesthetic that influenced the European art world of the late nineteenth century, especially the pictorial language of Van Gogh, Monet, Degas and Klimt, and still continues to inspire artists, designers, much of contemporary graphic production, and Tattoo art today.

The exposed kimonos come from a precious private collection, consisting of over 700 kimonos from daily life and intended for family ceremonies of the Meiji period (1868-1912), the short period of Taishō peace (1912/1926) and the first twenty years of the Shōwa period (1926 / 1945).

For more information: www.filatoiocaraglio.it