This textile are made up of several pieces of silk stitched together. The all over pattern of petalled rosettes are made by the technique of resist dyeing. It is unclear what the piece would have been used for, although it is most likely to have been part of a burial shroud. The textile was recovered from the site of Karakhoja. Karakhoja lies south of Turfan, towards the eastern end of the northern Silk Road. The Chinese established a military post at Karakhoja in the fourth century AD, but it fell to successive nomadic groups until the Chinese regained it during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). The Turkic Uygurs then made Karakhoja their capital. .

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 – while silk textiles travelled west from China, Buddhism entered China from India in this way.

This textile was 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.