Katagami Stencil

Katagami stencil

Katagami stencils are hand cut from paper that was treated with persimmon juice and sometimes lacquer to make it water resistant to hold up to repeated uses of dye and other pastes. These stencils used to either resist dye or direct dye textiles, paper and other materials and commonly used for making obi or kimono printed fabrics for centuries. This technique is the forerunner of silkscreen. Silk threads hold the floating pieces of paper in place, and as time went on, more threads were added until a woven screen resulted and the silkscreen method resulted.