
Mark Rasmussen
International Director
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Sold for US$18,750 inc. premium
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International Director
漢藏 約十八世紀 錦緞緙絲千佛袈裟
This luxurious gold monastic silk is pieced together to echo the design of patchwork robes worn by monks who have taken Buddha's vow of poverty and only wear donated scraps of cloth stitched together. However, the present example is obviously very elaborate with due restrictions on its appropriate use, being reserved only for occasional use by the highest and most spiritually adept monastic officials, as well as for throne covers. For more information, see Valrae Reynolds, 'Thousand Buddhas Capes and Their Mysterious Role in Sino-Tibetan Trade and Liturgy,' in In Heavens' Embroidered Cloths, Hong Kong, 1995, pp.32-7.
The 'thousand Buddhas' express the core Mahayana belief of the Buddha's infinite availability to all. The actual count reproduced on the garment is inconsequential. Reynolds also discusses a fragment held in the Newark Museum that shows Buddha images seated on similar pointed lotus leaf platforms worked in a combination of counted stitch and silk-floss satin stitch ('Myriad Buddhas: A Group of Mysterious Textiles from Tibet', in Orientations, vol.21, no.4, April 1990, p.91, fig.4).
The corpus of related examples varies dramatically in look and attribution. Compare with kashaya in the Cleveland Museum of Art dated to the 14th century, in Watt & Wardell, When Silk Was Gold, New York, 1997, pl.64. Compare a kesi Buddhist priest's robe illustrated in Hong Kong Museum of Art, In Heavens' Embroidered Cloths, Hong Kong, 1995, pl.45, as well as two embroidered examples, ibid., pls.43-4.
Provenance
Collection of a Private American Family, acquired in Kathmandu, 1967-70