Dunhuang Textiles in the UK

Project leader: Helen Wang

Department: Coins and Medals

Project start: 2006
End date: 2007

Other British Museum staff: Carol Michaelson

Other departments: Asia

External partners:
Prof ZHAO Feng, China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou
Dr Frances Wood, The British Library, London http://www.bl.uk/
Helen Persson, Victoria & Albert Museum, London http://www.vam.ac.uk/

Project funded by: The British Academy

Description:

The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, near Dunhuang (northwest China) are a key site on the Silk Road. One of those caves, Cave 17, was a hidden library containing paintings, documents, textiles and other finds that had been sealed off in the eleventh century. In the early twentieth century Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943) sent many of these finds to London, where they are now in the British Museum, British Library and Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

China’s leading expert on silk, Prof ZHAO Feng, has been working on the Dunhuang textiles at the British Museum and Helen Persson has been working on the Dunhuang textiles at the V&A. The aim of the project was to bring their research together, along with a history of the collection, and to publish a scholarly catalogue.

Objectives:

To produce the catalogue Dunhuang Textiles in the UK, to be published by Donghua University Press, Shanghai in 2007. (There will be two separate volumes: a Chinese language volume and an English language volume).