Silk temple cloth, Japan, late Meiji (circa 1900), cm 62x62. This is an ‘uchishiki’, a squarish cloth of rich silk used to cover the front of altars in Buddhist temples. The origin of the uchishiki can be traced back to the lifetime of Shakyamuni Buddha. During the Buddha's time a custom was established of spreading out fine pieces of cloth for the Buddha to sit on when preaching to his disciples and others assembled to hear him. The cloth would be spread out and the disciples would bow in reverence to the Buddha with their foreheads touching the cloth at his feet. It later came to decorate the altar tables of temples on special occasions of hearing the Buddha's teaching. As with many other temple cloths, this is obtained by recycling and patching fabrics. In our case different parts of a single pieced fabric were joined to obtain the actual square cloth. The pattern, an array of paulownia leaves, is obtained via embroidery of a not-twisted thin weft thread in a wonderful shade of lime-acid-yellow silk onto a purple silk background. The overall result is impressive, with shiny look and soft touch. The uchishiki has been lined with an hand-woven hemp cloth, of rather stiff handle. Therefore, when taking pictures it was not easy to keep the cloth flat. Of course a proper ironing would fix the whole. Condition is not pristine, with a few of the delicate threads coming loose, particularly on edges, but this does not detract much from the intrinsic beauty of this object i think. i am attaching images taken with different light conditions; basically, an acid yellow colour shade can be considered as real colour though. Lovely, graphic and quite Japanese.