Black Gold Cloud Noren 'Yorukumo'

Black noren curtain with cream wave crests and gold flecks on a fine wave ground

Cream waves on black, with gold in the spray. This noren is a black ground printed with fine wave lines running across it, and over them large cream crests curling to the left with their foam drawn in fingers and flecks of gold scattered in the spray, stacked in rows from the rod to the hem. On black the cream reads as moonlight on water, and the gold is the glint.

It is the most formal of the wave curtains in the collection, and the one for a dark hallway.

The name, Yorukumo, is the night cloud, and the cream crests on black read as clouds at night as much as waves, which is the intent.

The curtain is a lightweight woven polyester printed through, hemmed on all sides, with a rod channel sewn across the top and a split running from just below the channel to the hem, so it hangs as two panels that part when you walk through and fall closed behind you. It is photographed on a rod across a doorway at the same scale as every noren in the collection.

Hang it on a tension rod or a dowel through the channel, across a doorway, a kitchen entrance, a corridor, a window or a wall, at a height where the hem clears the head. In Japan it hangs at a shop door to say open and in a house to make one room into two. It moves in a draught and it is meant to.

The gold flecks are the detail: small dots of gold in the spray above each crest, printed after the cream, so they sit on top and catch the light. The fine wave lines on the black ground are the other, and they show only from close.

Machine wash cool on a gentle cycle, hang to dry, and iron on low if the fold shows. The print is through the cloth and does not fade in an ordinary room; keep it out of direct sun if you want the colour to last for years.

From across a room it is a black curtain with pale curls. From close the curls are crests, the spray shows its gold, and the ground its lines. It is the noren for a hallway and a person who likes black with something on it.

Nine sizes, width by drop: 55 by 90, 65 by 100, 70 by 120, 80 by 130, 90 by 150, 95 by 160, 100 by 170, 110 by 180 and 120 by 200 cm. Measure the doorway and choose a width a few centimetres wider and a drop that clears the head; the split is in every size.