Did you grow up in the 70s? If so, did your mother make clothes for herself and the family using Japanese dress pattern books like this?
My mom did. I was always curious why those pattern books were invariably in Japanese. My mom did not read Japanese, how useful did she really find those books? Why could she not get those books in Chinese or English? It was one of those childhood puzzles that I don't think I ever solved.
But then last week, while visiting the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, I came across these books in the museum shop, which had an unusual array of art instruction books and even art supplies.
I bought a rather big bunch of these, and am pretty excited about the new "discovery" - Japanese art instruction books were inexpensive (compared to the ones from the US and Europe sold here) and were very detailed in terms of pictoral representations (which is helpful since I don't read Japanese!) Best of all, they had an "oriental" slant to the painting styles, i.e. clean and less fussy than the traditional Western methods, which is personally an appealing thing to me.
Another section to explore at Kinokuniya! :)
My mom did. I was always curious why those pattern books were invariably in Japanese. My mom did not read Japanese, how useful did she really find those books? Why could she not get those books in Chinese or English? It was one of those childhood puzzles that I don't think I ever solved.
But then last week, while visiting the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, I came across these books in the museum shop, which had an unusual array of art instruction books and even art supplies.
I bought a rather big bunch of these, and am pretty excited about the new "discovery" - Japanese art instruction books were inexpensive (compared to the ones from the US and Europe sold here) and were very detailed in terms of pictoral representations (which is helpful since I don't read Japanese!) Best of all, they had an "oriental" slant to the painting styles, i.e. clean and less fussy than the traditional Western methods, which is personally an appealing thing to me.
Another section to explore at Kinokuniya! :)