Style combination · Pairs well

Kamon × Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Crest-like roundels sit naturally beside stencil-dyed panels; draw new crests by the tradition's rules rather than borrowing real family mon.

From the research on Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Mix them and make something Kamon Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Kamon, their arrangement from Kamon, the finish from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Type from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Kamon: Monochrome
Flat fields
Form from Kamon: Pictogram
Emblems & badges
Composition from Kamon: Radial & concentric
Central symmetry
Surface from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics: Paper & letterpress bite
Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Tide

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Hand-cut stencil kana and kanji, dyed together with the picture, for calendar month names, book titles and inscriptions

Text · Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

Japanese folk-craft graphic design made by cutting paper stencils and dyeing through a rice-paste resist. Figures, tools, houses, plants and kana or kanji are cut as one stencil, so letters and pictures share the same soft, hand-cut edge and sit as flat fields of earth, indigo and bingata red on undyed cloth or washi. Serizawa used it for calendars, book covers, screens and picture books, setting small everyday scenes in grids of panels or repeating them across the cloth.

Shippori Mincho; Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics used Hand-cut stencil kana and kanji, dyed together with the picture, for calendar month names, book titles and inscriptions and Moji-e (文字絵), letters built from figures and objects, collected in Serizawa Keisuke no moji-e, san

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Kamon, with a counter-accent from Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

#f3efe6 ground · 36%
#121212 ink · 14%
#b38f3d accent · 18%
#8c2d25 accent · 14%
#1d2b47 accent · 10%
#6b7a3a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe6;
  --ink: #121212;
  --accent-1: #b38f3d;
  --accent-2: #8c2d25;
  --accent-3: #1d2b47;
  --accent-4: #6b7a3a;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Mon are inherited marks of particular families, shrines, temples and institutions. Only the imperial chrysanthemum is named in Japanese law: the Trademark Act (art. 4(1)(i)) bars registering it or anything like it. The government's paulownia, though the official emblem of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, was never given the same legal restrictions, while famous crests registered as trademarks, such as Mitsubishi's three diamonds, are protected as marks. Do not use the chrysanthemum, the government paulownia, or any identifiable family's, shrine's or temple's crest as decoration or as a brand. Imperial emblems can also recall Japan's wartime empire for audiences in Korea and China. The manji (卍), a standard crest (the Hachisuka clan; the temple crest of Sensō-ji), is read in the West as the Nazi swastika: avoid it outside a Japanese context that explains it. Draw new crests by the tradition's rules instead of borrowing real ones, and commission or credit working monsho uwaeshi, who still draw and paint crests by hand.

Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics: Katazome and Okinawan bingata are living crafts: bingata is an Okinawan (Ryukyuan) tradition, carried on by dye houses such as the Shiroma family, and is protected as an intangible cultural property, so credit Okinawa and its makers when borrowing its colours and motifs, and do not sell printed or generated imitations as hand-dyed katazome or bingata. Mainland mingei collecting of Okinawan and Korean crafts in the 1930s and 1940s is now read critically against Japan's colonial rule over Korea and its treatment of annexed Okinawa, which is one more reason to name Okinawan makers rather than present bingata as Serizawa's invention. Serizawa's and Yunoki's designs are authored works held by their museums: work in the manner rather than copying a calendar or screen. His Buddhist subjects, such as the 1939 scroll of the priest Hōnen, are devotional images, not decoration. Kana and kanji must be real, correct text checked by a fluent reader, never pseudo-script used as texture.