The Stein Collection
- Object:
- Place of origin:
- Date:
- Artist/Maker:
- Materials and Techniques:
Plain woven, plaited and knitted wool and felt
- 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 assorted textile fragments include pieces of wool and felt. Their original use is unclear although it was probably practical rather than purely decorative. They were recovered from the site of Miran on the eastern verge of the Taklamakan desert, where material was discovered at a Buddhist shrine abandoned in the 4th or 5th century AD.
The site is part of an area of Central Asia we now call the Silk Road. This series of overland trade routes crossed Asia from China to Europe. The most notable item traded was silk but the Silk Road was also important for the exchange of ideas. While silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism travelled east, entering China from India.
The explorer and archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) brought this piece of fibre back from Central Asia. The V&A has around 700 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Stein at the beginning of the 20th century. Some are silk while others, like these pieces, are made from the wool of a variety of different animals.
Physical description
Several pieces of fabric, tied together with Stein number label, including monochrome braided cream wool, red wool and blue wool, monochrome cream fabric-backed felt, monochrome plain weave and twill weave, and monochrome braided cream wool thread
Place of Origin
Miran, China (excavated)
Date
300-500 (made)
Artist/maker
Unknown (production)
Materials and Techniques
Plain woven, plaited and knitted wool and felt
Dimensions
Length: 21 cm longest piece, Width: 9 cm longest piece
Object history note
Attached to fragments is a circular tag label showing Stein number possibly in Stein's handwriting or that of his assistant, Miss F M G Lorimer.
Historical context note
Miran lies between Kargilik and kake 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
Various fragments of felt, braided wool, wool twill and plain woven unidentified fibre
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
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.547. Vol.IV, pl.XLVIII
Associated names
Stein, Marc Aurel (Sir)
Materials
Wool; Felt
Techniques
Plain weave; Twill weave; Braiding
Categories
Archaeology; Textiles
Collection code
EAS
