Dragon Wave Noren Curtain 'Ryunami'

Green noren curtain with carp leaping through a wave pattern and spray

Carp leaping through a green sea. This noren is a sea green ground printed with the overlapping scales of the seigaiha in a darker green, and through the pattern carp in dark scales leap and dive with bursts of cream spray where they break the surface, scattered across both panels. The title calls them dragons; in the old story the carp that climbs the waterfall becomes one.

It is the one wave curtain in the collection with an animal in it, and the green is the colour of a pond.

The name, Ryunami, is the dragon wave, the wave the carp climbs to become one, and the curtain is that wave with the carp still in it.

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 spray is the detail: each carp breaks the pattern in a burst of cream drawn as fingers, so the fish read as moving through the water rather than printed on it, and the scales of the fish are drawn dark against the green.

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 green curtain with dark shapes on it. From close the shapes are carp, the spray shows its fingers, and the ground its scales. It is the noren for a person who knows the carp story and for a green room.

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.