Album of Textile Samples China, Tang dynasty (618-907) or Japan, Nara period (710-794)

Album of Textile Samples

700s

China, Tang dynasty (618-907) or Japan, Nara period

(710-794)

Overall: 42.5 x 46 x 6 cm (16 3/4 x 18 1/8 x 2 3/8 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1954.70

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Description

The album contains an important collection of early East Asian textiles. There are fifty-five fragments in the album representing forty-five different textiles. The fragments vary in size from the smallest, about an inch square, to the largest, which is fifteen inches square. With three exceptions, the pieces are of silk.

The techniques represented include plain cloth and gauzes, either monochrome or with printed decoration, and damask-like weaves with a ground in plain cloth and a pattern in twill and one example with the ground in weft twill and the pattern in warp twill. The compound weaves include one example of a compound warp-face cloth, a technique that had all but died out after Han times, and a number of compound twills with a variety of elaborate decorative motifs, which are among the most important and interesting in the collection. There are one embroidery and one fragment of silk tapestry.