Embroidered Patchwork Panel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This patchwork panel comprises various silk textiles, mostly satins and damasks, exquisitely embroidered with the motifs of flowers, fruit, and the occasional butterfly in a technique called needle looping. Worked in silk over gilt paper, the technique allows the luminous gold to show where loops are intentionally skipped. The patches in this Chinese example seem to have been constructed and embroidered as self-contained units that were stitched together to form a larger panel. By contrast, Korean patchwork cloths are usually fashioned from fragments of unadorned, rather than embroidered fabrics, though there are non-patchwork bojagi fashioned from a single cloth with embroidered decoration. This textile was probably used in a Buddhist context but its precise function is unknown. A comparable example, traditionally associated with the Chinese monk Wuxue Zuyuan (1226–1286), resides in the collection of the Buddhist temple Engakuji in Kamakura, Japan.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art