ca. mid nineteenth century
9" x 15", 23" x 38"

This is a fabulously hand pieced bag made of luxury silks, heavily woven silk damask fabrics being chief among them. Each of the scallop-shaped silk pieces is backed with paper and stitched together to form this "fancy" bag, most probably used to carry offerings of dry rice or beans to a Buddhist temple.

This bag has much more than meets the eye: note the complex, geometric piecing to the bottom of the bag, the wonderful gromwell root (shikon) dyed chirimen silk shibori banding to the top of the piece AND, not shown, is the wonderful lining to this bag which is sewn from two types of kasuri hemp cloth.  Really fabulous--and dyed completely in botanical dyes, over 26 pieces of silk in all.

As this bag dates from the nineteenth century, some of the silks are a bit fragile and some have unraveled a bit, but this is to be expected in something that is about 150 years old.

Very recommended.