Long Geometric Noren Curtain 'Kasuri'

Cream noren curtain with bands of geometric pattern in red, plum and gold

Bands of pattern on cream, in warm colours. This noren is a cream ground printed with horizontal bands of geometric pattern, diamonds, arrows, small triangles and dashes in red, plum, gold and grey, spaced down both panels with cream between them, so the curtain reads as a woven cloth rather than a printed one. It is the one noren in the collection with no wave and no blue.

It is the noren for a person who wants warmth and a pattern that is not the sea.

The name, Kasuri, is the ikat weave, the cloth whose threads are dyed before weaving so the pattern blurs at the edge, and the bands here are drawn in that spirit, with soft edges.

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 bands are the detail: seven or eight of them down the drop, each a different motif, diamonds in plum, arrows in red, triangles in gold, with wide cream gaps between, and the split runs through the gaps. The colours are warm and the cream is unbleached.

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 cream curtain with coloured stripes. From close the stripes are bands of pattern, the motifs show their shapes, and the edges their softness. It is the noren for a living room and a person who likes textile.

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.