Silk links faraway worlds

The first things likely to catch a discerning eye are the tiny nude figures delicately woven into a woolen robe, their forms unmistakably those of Eros, the god of love from the Hellenistic world. They stand beneath pomegranate trees, surrounded by goats and oxen, in a scene that feels at once Mediterranean and Central Asian.

Yet, this textile was not discovered in Greece, Persia, or Rome. It emerged from the desert sands of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region's Yingpan Cemetery, a burial ground located along the ancient Silk Road — a place where cultures met, mingled, and stitched themselves together in silk and wool.

The robe, once wrapped around an adult male, is a highlight in a volume devoted to the textile collections of the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. The book forms part of A Comprehensive Collection of Chinese Silks — an ambitious international publishing project that seeks to gather dispersed silk treasures housed in museums around the world into a single intellectual space.

Launched in January 2022 and led by Zhao Feng, former director of the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, the project has so far produced 12 volumes. Each is compiled by the institutions that hold the works, with scholars collaborating across borders to catalog, analyze and interpret them. Another 88 volumes are planned over the coming years.

"Every detail of this man's clothing could warrant a chapter of its own," says Zhao, now director of the Silk Art and Silk Roads Research Center at Zhejiang University.

Between the 2nd century BC and the 4th century AD, Yingpan served as a key Silk Road hub and an important outpost within the ancient Kingdom of Loulan, a major oasis state that later declined rapidly in the 5th century.

Excavated in the late 1980s, Yingpan has revealed a trove of textiles unlike any other in China: silk robes and wool coats, embroidered trousers, braided ribbons, printed silks, and fabrics shimmering with gold foil. These garments reveal a world in which cultures overlapped and left their lasting mark in thread and pattern.