Ko-bukusa Cloth (Tea-things) (kanjinsyumonnishiki)

The original of this brocade is a superb piece of warp-patterned silk produced during the Han Dynasty, probably in the 3rd century, which was excavated at Lou-lan by Sir Aurel Stein, a British orientalist. On a crimson-brown ground, vertical stripes are woven in yellow, light brown and bark blue with motifs of dragons and tigers surrounded by cloud and floral scrolls. Ten Chinese chara-cters with auspicious meaning are horizontally woven in white. Our first reproduction was executed in 1920s. In this new version of patterns a slight change is made in the arrangement of those Chinese characters and animal motifs, with the same colour scheme as the original, in an effort to make the design more elegant. The weaving composition is warp-patterned, too. Thus, the refined artistic beauty of the original fabric has been revived with modern weaving techniques.