Kyo Hyogu

Framing that steps back

Hyogu is the craft of mounting: backing calligraphy and paintings with paper and cloth and making them into hanging scrolls, handscrolls and frames, or building folding screens, partitions and fusuma sliding doors. Scrolls decorate the tokonoma alcove, while screens and fusuma divide rooms and block wind and view. Kyo hyogu is called the most refined mounting in Japan: it brings out the work without drawing attention to itself. It is made in Kyoto and elsewhere in Kyoto.

Layer on layer

• For scrolls, the artwork and the cloth are backed with paper using starch paste.
• The parts are joined, and the whole scroll is lined once more.
• For fusuma and screens, paper is pasted onto a wooden frame in layers: underlayers, main layers and a top layer.
• Finally the outer frame is fitted.

Sutras, alcoves and tea

Mounting began in the Heian period as a way to strengthen sutras and calligraphy with cloth. Over time it grew into all kinds of mounting for keeping and enjoying art. Kyoto's humid basin climate suited the work, and with the rise of the tokonoma alcove and of the tea ceremony from the late Muromachi to the Edo period, Kyoto mounting came to reflect the refined taste of tea masters.