The Stein Collection
- Object:
- Place of origin:
- Date:
- Artist/Maker:
- Materials and Techniques:
Plain woven cotton, painted woven cotton, and bamboo sticks. Identified from ribbon-like fibres, elongated air bubbles and fine spiral markings.
- Credit Line:
Stein Textile Loan Collection. On loan from the Government of India and the Archaeological Survey of India. Copyright: Government of India.
- Museum number:
- Gallery location:
- Image in copyright
These textile fragments are mainly of buff plain woven cotton, some have been cut into lotus flower shapes and others show the remains of paint and deliberately made holes. Originally the lotus flowers, attached to bamboo sticks, would probably have been pushed through the holes in the larger textile pieces. These fragments were recovered from the site of Miran on the eastern verge of the Taklamakan desert. At this site material was discovered at a Buddhist shrine abandoned in the 4rd or 5th century AD.
The site is part of an area of Central Asia we now call the Silk Road, a series of overland trade routes that crossed Asia, from China to Europe. The most notable item traded was silk. Camels and horses were used as pack animals and merchants passed the goods from oasis to oasis. The Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas. The Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas – while silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism entered China from India in this way.
These textile fragments were brought back from Central Asia by the explorer and archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862–1943). The Victoria and Albert Museum has around 700 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Stein at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some are silk while others are made from the wool of a variety of different animals.
Physical description
Fragments, mainly of plain weave cotton, mostly buff, including lotus flower shapes, and pieces showing the remains of painted plaster and deliberately made holes. Some bamboo sticks remain. Cotton flower has sustained more damage than other yarns.
Place of Origin
Miran, China (excavated)
Date
300-500 (made)
Artist/maker
unknown (production)
Materials and Techniques
Plain woven cotton, painted woven cotton, and bamboo sticks. Identified from ribbon-like fibres, elongated air bubbles and fine spiral markings.
Dimensions
Length: 3 cm, Width: 2.2 cm, Length: 38 cm largest piece, Width: 30.5 cm largest piece
Object history note
One small fragment has been housed in a cream envelope which has been labelled 'M.III.0026' in typewriten text and 'Cotton' in handwritten form probably by either or both Marc Aurel Stein and his assistant Miss F M G Lorimer.
Historical context note
Miran lies between Kargilik and lake Lop Nor on the southern Silk Road. Stein excavated an ancient fort and remains of a Buddhist sanctuary there in 1907 and uncovered spectacular Buddhist murals in its temples and stupas. These depicted winged figures with garlands; imagery which he identified with the mythology and style of Persia and Greece. The appearance of the signature "Tita" led Stein to conclude that the paintings were the work of an artist from the eastern Mediterranean. Temple sculpture, including a colossal Buddha head, was rendered in the opulent Gandharan style of northwest India. Stein called this fusion of regional styles Graeco-Buddhist and determined that the site had flourished in the first centuries of the millennium, when trade along the southern Silk Road had thrived. The V&A holds, on loan, from Miran, silk and wool fragments, and a group of lotus flowers made of cotton and silk and fragments of a painted cotton temple hanging.
Descriptive line
Fragments of mainly plain woven buff cotton, some cut into flower shapes and some showing the remains of paint and holes.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Wilson, Verity. 'Early Textiles from Central Asia: Approaches to Study with reference to the Stein Loan Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London', Textile History 26 (1) . Devon: David & Charles/Pasold Research Fund Ltd, 1995, pp.23-52.
Stein, Aurel, Serindia: Detailed Report of Exploration in Central Asia and Westernmost China Carried Out and Described Under the Orders of H.M Indian Government , 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), vol. I, p.543.
Associated names
Stein, Marc Aurel (Sir)
Materials
Cotton; Bamboo
Techniques
Painting; Plain weave
Categories
Archaeology; Textiles
Collection code
EAS
