Project weaves global map of silk's grand history

If silk could talk, it would probably complain about jet lag. After all, Chinese silk has spent the last two millennia circling the globe — wrapped around emperors, merchants, monks and museum storage shelves from Stockholm to New York.

Now, for the first time, these well-traveled threads are being formally reintroduced to one another in "A Comprehensive Collection of Chinese Silks", an ambitious publishing project with an equally globe-trotting scope.

Launched in January 2022, the project is led by Professor Zhao Feng of Zhejiang University, in collaboration with Zhejiang University Press and some 80 collecting institutions worldwide.

"The plan is as ambitious as it is patient," Zhao said in Beijing on Monday at the launch of the project's first 12 volumes. "Over the course of a decade, we aim to publish 100 meticulously researched books.

"Roughly half focus on collections within China. The rest document Chinese silks preserved abroad. Think of it as an international family reunion — except everyone brings footnotes, fiber analysis and high-resolution photographs," he said.

Each volume is compiled by specialists from the holding institutions, supported by the project team in cataloguing, technical analysis, proofreading and publishing. The format is systematic: an introductory essay, in-depth studies of 10 to 15 masterpieces, and around 150 additional objects, all documented with scholarly precision.

The goal is not just to admire silk's beauty, but to understand how it was woven, dyed, used, traded, reused, and occasionally cut up and scattered across continents.

The pace so far has been brisk. Within two years, 12 volumes have been published, covering collections ranging from the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Hunan Museum in Changsha to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the British Museum in London. Another 50 volumes — spanning the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Gansu province, Paris, Tokyo and Washington, DC — are already being prepared. For textile historians, this is the scholarly equivalent of finding an entire bolt of silk where once there were only loose threads.

"International collaboration is not a decorative feature here; it is the backbone," Zhao said. "Many Chinese silks left the country through trade, diplomacy, exploration and less tidy historical circumstances. Reconstructing their stories now requires museums, researchers and publishers to work across borders, languages and academic traditions."

The result is a truly global map of silk history, one that shows how Chinese textiles functioned not only as luxury goods, but as cultural translators.

Archaeological finds — from the astonishing Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) textiles of Mawangdui in Central China's Hunan province to desert-preserved silks from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region — sit alongside export embroideries made for European merchants. Together, they reveal silk as both a technical triumph and a social network, long before anyone coined the term.

Beyond the printed books, the project is also building an online database to make this material accessible worldwide. It is, in essence, silk going digital — still delicate, still dazzling, but far easier to share.

"By bringing dispersed collections into conversation, 'A Comprehensive Collection of Chinese Silks' does more than publish books. It rewrites how silk history is studied: collaboratively, internationally, and with the quiet confidence that even the most fragile threads can hold the weight of global history," Zhao said.

zhaoxu@chinadaily.com.cn