Kimono Flea Market ICHIROYA's News Letter No.626
We are so happy to introduce our Kimono-Archive website which is now `soft-open'.
I think we have written about this project in our past newsletter around two years ago.
As we see and touch so many old/vintage kimono everyday, we feel it is a real shame just seeing them off from here.
There are many great collectors of kimono, so we felt it is not a good idea to start making a collection for ourselves. Wonderful photos and also valuable information are just here and there, scattered all over the world and there was no place where we can see them all together--there were no books or website having them at one place. I was wishing to make a sort of `virtual kimono museum' on the net, where these collectors could post the photos of their collection. If you visit that museum, you can see all the amazing and beautiful kimono-I was so thrilled with this idea.
There are many individuals who publish books or have their own website showing their collection but it would be much more exciting to share what people have - you can see the charms of old kimono world!
Also, it will be nice if collectors and researchers can exchange their opinions and infomation, there will be more discovery and enrich the knowledge.
If the website can have multiple languages, isn't that great? More people in the world can encounter the world of kimono, and if artists and designers are givin inspiration seeing this website, it is more than exciting!
Kimono from Taisho period (Taisho 1912-1926) are nearly 100 years old and life of silk is long but sometimes around 100 years is their life time. They cannot last forever.
I felt we should try keeping the pictures at least. Wait a minute, art pieces like great paintings or architectures are preserved by government. Kimono also is a treasure of our country, then why don't they try preserving them?
In the hierarchy of art, kimono holds a very low position. Kimono are considered to be `practical' thing, not art. All right then, only measure left is starting this for ourselves-for next generation.
When many people join and appreciate the meaning of this website, government may recognize the value of kimono and can take over the responsibility to make it more established. We hope so and just start the website-that is what we can do now.
I have a great friend who shares this idea. Yuji Moriya -- he has well-known website (Shinei and Sou). Everybody in this field knows him. You may know his website and his shop on ebay.
We have been in the same business over ten years. He is a man of action and tries everything with speed. We have known each other over ten years and have been discussing about the need of the virtual museum. I thought he was the best guy for the position and asked him to represent this NPO organization.
https://www.kimono-archive.com/KimonoArchive/index?id=19
In the above page, I have posted the special items collected over these two years.
From this page(you can find me, wearing glasses- sorry for not being a good looking guy), you can click to see the collection.
If more collection from all over the world can also be here, the place will mean so much and will be just great! What do you think?
You can register, post your collection- it is not always necessary to post photos, you can just leave comment about other people's posted photos, that is fine also. If you are really interested, you can be a supporter too.
This website is NPO base, and makng this website takes a lot of money. We could finally reached start point and could do `soft open' but still the system is not perfect, and actually still in the improvement stage. There are still quite much inconvenience, especially viewing from smartphone, we are still working on it. We are still working and trying to make the website more convenient and viewed easily and smoothly. Our aim is to make this website a most appropriate and exciting virtual museum for everyone who are interested in kimono. We hope the website can be a unique and most enjoyable place to gather treasures.
Your participation will be greatly appreciated!
