Description
Rushes were dyed and interwoven with glittering strips of straw to make the design on this mat. Another mat (Important Cultural Property) that reportedly belonged to Empress Suiko (554–628) was passed down at Hōrinji Temple in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture. Together, they preserve the appearance of Japan’s early woven rush mats. The border fabric has flowers and vines in weft-faced compound weave and supplementary weft patterning, both standard medieval Japanese techniques. The addition of such fabric reveals how the mat was carefully preserved in later periods at Hōryūji Temple to ensure it retained its shape.
Data source
ColBase
"ColBase: Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan" is a service that enables a multi-database search of the collections in the four national museums (To...
Contents holder/Provider
Aggregator
National Institutes for Cultural Heritage
The National Institutes for Cultural Heritage (NICH) comprise four National Museums (Tokyo National Museum, Kyoto National Museum, Nara National Museum, and Kyushu National Museum) and two National Research Institutes for Cultural Properties (Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, and Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties), as well as the International Research Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region (IRCI) in Sakai City, for a total of seven institutions.
Last updated
July 20, 2026