Admission is Free | Open Wed–Sun
Object Name: Futon cover (futonji), fragment
Place of Origin: San-in region, western Honshu, Japan
Medium/Materials: Cotton; weft ikat
Credit Line: Fowler Museum. Krauss Collection of Japanese Textiles
Accession Number: X2008.6.196
This dynamic pattern combines lightning bolts, turtles, and round tama, or Buddhist wish-fulfilling jewels. In Japanese folklore, lightning (inazuma) is associated with rice agriculture; inazuma literally means wife of rice. The flowing mantles of seaweed growing on the turtles? backs indicate long life. The tama is one of the most recurrent images in Japanese art, frequently a symbol of good harvests and prosperity.
Source: Gallery wall text from the exhibition Fowler in Focus: Japanese Pictorial Ikats from the Krauss Collection, 2012