banner; textile; 幡(Chinese); 紡織品(Chinese) BM-MAS.876

Period:Tang dynasty Production date:8thC-9thC
Materials:silk, 絲綢 (Chinese),
Technique:woven, clamp resist-dyed, 織造 (Chinese), 夾纈 (Chinese),
Subjects:bird 鳥 (Chinese)
Dimensions:Height: 40.60 centimetres (mounted) Height: 24.30 centimetres (textile) Length: 23.80 centimetres (fragment a) Length: 25.80 centimetres (fragment b) Width: 23.80 centimetres (fragment a) Width: 25.80 centimetres (fragment b) Width: 40.60 centimetres (mounted) Width: 24.50 centimetres (textile) Depth: 2.50 centimetres (mounted)

Description:
These are two square-shaped fragments of plain woven silk patterned with the clamp-resist dyeing technique. MAS.876 has two confronting geese and a quarter of a roundel; MAS.877 has only half a goose but a larger area of quatrefoil, and one selvedge, 0.3 cm wide. By placing the two pieces together, Stein was able to reconstruct the pattern. It consists of two motifs: a dominant large roundel with encircled rosettes and a narrower inner roundel, enclosing four paired geese; and a four-petalled flower in the centre, and the other secondary quatrefoil. The repeat in the warp direction is about 56.6 cm but it is unclear in the weft direction. The textile was dyed with two colours: orange for the geese, flowers and quatrefoil, and blue for the ground, the large roundel, the little pearl roundel and the leaves inside the roundel. Some green leaves of the quatrefoil were made by painting a yellow colour on the blue leaves. Another fragment from the same textile (but without geese) is in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Дх51). Weave structures: Warp: silk, untwisted, single, 50 ends/cm; Weft: silk, untwisted, 34 lats/cm. Weave structure: 1/1 plain weave. 兩片用夾纈製成的絲織品殘片，均爲正方形。一件MAS876中帶有一對大雁和四分之一的團窠，而MAS877中只有半隻大雁，但卻有更多的十樣賓花，以及0.3cm寬的幅邊。兩件織物原爲相鄰的兩片，正好可以拼在一起，圖案已在斯坦因《Serindia》中復原。圖案分團窠和十樣花兩個主題，團窠中間是四瓣花，然後是四對大雁，團窠環由聯珠小團花組成。圖案的經向循環約在56.6cm，緯向循環不明，但應與此相近。夾纈染色包括兩種基本色彩，一是橙色用於染雁、花和團窠環的底色，二是藍色用於染地、團窠環、小聯珠環以及團窠環內的葉子，十樣花上的葉子由於在藍色上加繪了黃色而呈現出綠色。同樣圖案的夾纈絹幡在聖彼得堡愛米塔什博物館中也有收藏（Дх51）。 組織結構： 經線：絲，無撚，單根排列，50根/cm；緯線：絲，無撚，34根/cm；組織：1/1平紋。
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Comments:Rawson 1994:All types of textile art flourished during the Tang dynasty (AD 618-906) in China. An important group of Tang textiles has recently been found in excavations at the Famensi at Fufeng, in Shaanxi province; gifts to this monastery evidently included clothing as well as glass, silver and ceramics. Embroidery also continued to be developed and was used for large images of the Buddha built up in satin and chain stitch (BM MAS.0.1129). Most of the textiles found by Aurel Stein at Dunhuang in Gansu province, including banners, altar hangings and monks’ apparel, follow the Buddhist convention of being made up of small cut pieces of different cloth. These ‘patchwork’ items provide an invaluable cross-section of the different types of silk cloth and embroidery available at the time (BM MAS.857).Trade along the Silk Route was at its most vigorous during the Tang dynasty, and travellers record the bazaars of the Middle East as being full of Chinese patterned cloth and embroideries. Simultaneously we are told that the Tang capital at Chang’an (present-day Xi’an) was populated by large numbers of Iranian craftsmen. A silk weave now known as “weft-faced compound twill” appears among Chinese textiles for a few centuries from about AD 700. This may well have been a technique introduced by foreign weavers, as it seems to have been developed originally in Iran. In the West it was particularly associated with repeating designs of roundels enclosing paired or single animals, with flower heads or rosettes between the roundels (BM MAS.877). The outer border of this design is a sinicised version of the pearl roundel motif found on Sasanian metalwork and stucco while the naturalistic pairs of birds occur on Tang silver ang gold.This piece of silk would have been folded diagonally and used as the top of long Buddhist banners.