Hiragana is one among three elements of the Japanese writing system, together with katakana and kanji. As a phonetic syllabary, every of the 46 characters represents a sound, and for essentially the most half, every sound within the Japanese language—identified particularly as mora—corresponds to 1 character.
For illustrator and fiber artist Tomoko Kubo, the lettering system sparked an ongoing collection of embroideries that additionally perform as playful linguistic studying instruments.
Kubo embeds imagery into the type of every character. Pictured above, for instance, is the character う, which is used for the syllable “u.” The artist’s composition visualizes phrases that start with that character: a horse (うま), a rabbit (うさぎ), and a seaside (うみべ).
Kubo started the collection after taking part in an exhibition in late 2021 by which a gaggle of artists collectively created an image e book, with every particular person accountable for designing one web page. “I embroidered the hiragana character ‘y’ (よ), and it turned out beautifully,” Kubo tells Colossal. “That experience sparked the idea to start embroidering hiragana characters.”
Beginning with syllables from her personal title, the primary characters the artist embroidered had been “to” (と) and “mo” (も). Kubo was spurred by an overwhelmingly optimistic reception on social media, and she or he plans to finish all the hiragana collection between different illustration and craft initiatives.
Discover extra on Kubo’s web site. (through Spoon & Tamago)
