Japanese Fukuro Obi with Butterfly Pattern

Two butterflies hover over a heap of garden flowers on a pale champagne sky.

This fukuro obi with butterfly pattern is from Japan, and is ca. 1940. It is silk. A fukuro obi is a woven sash worn with a kimono, made as a bag-like tube of doubled cloth so that it is patterned on both faces. At a glance, a folded textile with a shimmering champagne ground that clouds to cream. A curved bank of orange, blue, yellow and lilac blossoms sweeps across the lower left, with two purple and blue butterflies above. A stitched line runs along the lower fold. It is 12 inches wide and 178 long.

The butterflies arrived first and have no intention of leaving.