Early Carpets and Tapestries on the Eastern Silk Road

A mystifying group of carpets and tapestries created along the Silk Route over five hundred years ago is the topic of this richly illustrated book. The carpets and tapestries with riveting yet puzzling designs have been preserved in closed treasure houses in the former Japanese capital since the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. They are brought out only one day a year for a Shinto-Buddhist festival procession and quickly returned to storage. This book is about their shrouded origin in China, the pariahs who wove them, the meaning of their obscure motifs, and the reasons for the secrecy continuing to surround their exhibition.