AHP 45: REVIEW: EARLY CARPETS AND TAPESTRIES ON THE EASTERN SILK ROAD

Abstract

Gloria Gonick’s book is the result of a series of detailed studies of some of the surviving Chinese Manichaean textiles, both in Japan and China.1 It has an ambitious composition and offers much more than the title announces. Less glamorous and more tribal than the many more studied luxury textiles, a mysterious group of thirty-six early painted tapestries and twenty-one carpets - all woolen - forms the focus of this study. They have been kept in Kyoto since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as part of the local Gion Festival floats' decorations and have until recently been understood as ink-painted tapestries from Korea and regional wool-pile carpets from western China. Indeed, the Japanese notion of the tapestries as Korean made perfect sense in so far as the Japanese having acquired them largely from Korea in centuries past.2 In this context, it is worthwhile to mention Thomas Cole, who argues for a change in focus on Tibetan rugs from the conventional references to both Chinese and Buddhist influence. Instead, he suggests that the Tibetan weaving tradition should be viewed in a Central Asian tribal context.1 Similarly, Gonick looks for the provenance beyond Korea and successfully traces all of these textiles back to Gansu in China. This new provenance is a significant contribution of her study. Another is contextualizing the textiles within the Manichaean religion and the material culture it gave rise to. It is these textiles, seen and understood at long last as Manichaean relics, and preserved in China and Japan, that are the subject of her book. ...