Teal Wave Noren Door Curtain 'Hisui-nami'

Teal noren curtain with cresting waves and foam in navy and white

Waves breaking in teal, navy and white. This noren is a teal ground printed dense with cresting waves, their bodies in navy and their foam in white, drawn with the curling fingers of the old prints and packed edge to edge so the curtain is a rough sea from the rod to the hem. The teal is the colour between the waves, and there is little of it.

It is the busiest of the wave curtains in the collection, and the one for a room that wants movement.

The name, Hisui-nami, is the jade wave, the teal of the ground, and the curtain is that colour under the foam.

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 foam is the detail: every crest breaks into curling white fingers drawn the way the print artists drew them, and the fingers of one wave reach into the trough of the next. The navy of the wave bodies is what makes the white read.

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 teal curtain with white on it. From close the white is foam, the foam shows its fingers, and the navy its depth. It is the noren for a bathroom or a kitchen and a person who likes a rough sea.

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.