Old Growth Bamboo has similar elements as many other bamboo katagami- this one generates opposite effect. The background is built from fine dots which craft a placid tone because they are all the same size. Large decayed chunks of bamboo build a sturdy vertical and then break so even though the form is large, it is softly rendered and interrupted allowing the other elements of the pattern to play off each other. Printed in repeat these vertical make a check. Jagged ends mimicking ikat. Graceful branches unfurl blades and blossoms giving us three spatial layers; forground; old bamboo, middle ground; new leaves, background; dots.

Notes on how bamboo blooms from katagami master, Susanna Kuo:
“Although bamboo is a common motif, I’ve never seen a stencil that depicts bamboo flowering. Large bamboo species flower at extremely long invervals (65-120 years). The life cycle of bamboo is mysterious because all the plants flower at the same time all over the globe and then die. It can take them years to grow back. This might explain the decayed conditions of the bamboo trunks in this stencil. Eventually, new plants grow from the rhizomes. This stencil might have been produced to commemorate one of these rare flowering events. I feel fortunate to have witnessed the flowering of Timber Bamboo (Phyllostachys bambusioides) in 1972-1973. Japanese scholars recorded the flowering of Timber Bamboo (madake) in the early 1700s and again between 1844 and 1847.