Navy Chevron Noren 'Yamagata'

Navy noren curtain with a white chevron pattern in fine lines, split down the middle

Chevrons in white line on navy, all the way down. This noren is a navy ground printed with a pattern of fine white chevrons in horizontal rows, each row pointing the opposite way to the one above, so the cloth reads as a herringbone from a distance and as a zigzag from close. It is the most graphic curtain in the collection and the plainest, and it goes in a modern room.

It is the noren for a person who wants the shape without a picture.

The name, Yamagata, is the mountain shape, the chevron, and the curtain is a mountain range in white line.

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 line is the detail: the chevrons are drawn in a thin white line on the navy, so the pattern is mostly ground, and the rows alternate direction so the whole curtain has a weave to it. The split runs through the pattern without breaking a row.

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 navy curtain with a white texture. From close the texture is chevrons, the rows show their alternation, and the line its fineness. It is the noren for a corridor and a person who likes a pattern that behaves.

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.