Itajime Board
An itajime board is a hand carved wooden panel used in the itajime process in order to impress resist dyed patterns onto cloth.
Itajime is a laborious and ingenious dyeing process using hand carved wooden boards: a full bolt of cloth is clamped under great pressure between boards that are carved in mirror image and stacked.
A tall stack of boards contains the entire bolt which is interleaved between all the carved panels. The stack holding the cloth is secured under the force of pressure and lowered into a dye bath: the parts of cloth that are highly pressurized by the raised parts of the boards resist dye. A resisted, repeat patterned cloth is the result.