Dear CIETA colleagues,

as you may know, we are presently engaged in the research of textiles from the Ryukyu Kingdom and Okinawa (old and new names of the same archipelago). These textiles include the Bingata type and those with woven patterns, made of a wide range of materials, including banana fiber and tunbyan.

My department is working with the top scholars in the field: Prof. Yoshikuni Yanagi, Prof Setsuko Nitta, and Ms Minako Hirata. In December 2018 we finished the survey of the 280 textiles in the Museum der Kulturen Basel and are now looking for other museum collections across  Europe. We are presently planning a research trip in the autumn of 2019 and would greatly appreciate it you could let me know of any such objects at my email address: thomsen@khist.uzh.ch.

Best regards,

Hans Bjarne Thomsen

Professor and Chair

Section for East Asian Art

University of Zurich

2019 01 Thomsen CV