Keisuke Serizawa 芹沢銈介 (1895-1984), a leader of the mingei (folk craft) movement, created the kataezome 型絵染  technique of stencil dying which was designated an Important Intangible Cultural Property in April 1956 with Serizawa himself recognized as a Living National Treasure of Japan embodying this technique.

Over his lifetime, Serizawa created countless designs for everything from matchbox covers, to kimono, to folding screens. But his most popular works are his mass produced, kataezome, stencil-dyed picture calendars on Japanese paper using designs drawn from Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Western motifs. These annual calendars, released in the late fall of the previous year, were first issued by Serizawa in 1946 and continue to be produced today by the traditional paper making company Keijusha 桂樹舎 in Toyama using previous years' (using a year with the same starting weekday and equal number of days) stencils originally cut by Serizawa, each stenciled by hand onto Keijusha's traditionally made durable paper, Yatsuo washi, particularly suited to withstand the rigors of stencil dying.

Calendars in the Collection

click on any image below to see the entire calendar for that year

Stencil Dyed Paper

A Little About Serizawa Keisuke

"Born into a family of cloth merchants, Serizawa was, literally, born into textiles. His grandfather was a calligrapher and, likely, the inspiration behind Serizawa’s subsequent use of Japanese symbols and Chinese letters in his designs. Early in life, he began painting and aspired to the fine arts. When his family’s financial setbacks dashed these hopes, he enrolled at a design college. After graduating, he began teaching and found work as a commercial designer, two pursuits that followed him for the rest of his life."[1]

 A world famous designer, painter, illustrator, dyer, book, paper and print maker, Keisuke Serizawa attracted international attention as early as 1925 for his distinctive Kataezome style, combining Japanese dyeing techniques with those of Okinawan bingata (stencil-dyed textiles.) This he applied with equal success to kimono and fabric patterns, wall hangings, paintings, fans and original prints. Above all, Keisuke Serizawa became a leading artist of 'Mingei' -- which in Japanese generally means folk art.[2] 

In 1956 Serizawa was designated by the Government of Japan as a "Living National Treasure" (intangible cultural asset) for his mingei (folk art or folk craft) work using hand-stenciled dyeing (katazome) techniques in which he combined traditional Japanese dyeing techniques with the bingata style he learned in Okinawa. As opposed to the traditional separation of labor in stencil dyeing, involving three individual craft people, one to cut the stencil, one to apply the resist design and one to do the actual dyeing, Serizawa insisted on performing or supervising all the steps himself. 

He was a leading first-generation member of the mingei (folk craft) movement along with its founder Yanagi Sōetsu 柳宗悦 (1889-1961), potter Hamada Shōji 濱田庄司 (1894-1978) and British potter and print maker Bernard Leach (1887-1979) among others. His designs were reproduced for use as book and book cover illustrations, calendars, matchbook covers, brochures, newspaper and magazine illustrations, kimono, paper prints, wall hangings and scrolls, folding screens, curtains, fans and much more.

[1] https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/making-art-in-paradise--serizawa-master-of-japanese-textile-design

[2] Mingei International Museum https://mingei.org/exhibitions/the-art-of-keisuke-serizawa

Mingei

Source: "The Myth of Yanagi's Originality: The Formation of Mingei Theory in its Social and Historical Context " by Yuko Kikuchi, appearing in Journal of Design History, 1994, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1994), pp. 247-266, Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society, Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1316066

Yanagi Sōetsu (1889-1961) was a leader of the Mingei (folk crafts) movement which developed in Japan in the 1920s and launched a nation-wide campaign for the revival of folk crafts. The aesthetic theory of the movement emphasized the supreme beauty of hand-made folk crafts for ordinary use, made by unknown craftsmen working in groups, free of ego and free of the desire to be famous or rich, merely working to earn their daily bread. Yanagi categorized the beauty of folk crafts as: (i) beauty of naturalness (natural materials and handmade naturally); (2) beauty of tradition (method and design); (3) beauty of simplicity (form and design); (4) beauty of functionality (form and design); (5) beauty of plurality (objects which could be copied and repeatedly produced in large quantities); (6) beauty of inexpensiveness; (7) beauty of selflessness (made by unknown, unlearned, poor craftsmen); and (8) beauty of health (not fragile). Using these categories, he set the standard of the 'true craft'. In later developments to strengthen this theory and to give a spiritual and religious explanation to the attitude of unknown craftsmen and the environment in which the works were created, he also used Buddhist analogies and terminology. Both in Japan and the West, his aesthetic ideas have been widely acknowledged and have become seminal for design history.

last revision:

4/06/2025 added alt text