The Golden Bestiary — Woven Cotton Throw

The story

In the old tellings, gold was never left unguarded. Griffins kept it in the far north, the story went, and lions sat at the doors of kings. When the steppe empire rose, it moved thousands of weavers across Asia and set them to one task: to weave power you could wear. They threaded gold through silk until the cloth itself shone like a treasury, and in its roundels they placed the guardians, paired lions with clouds in their wings.

The Golden Bestiary calls those guardians home. Winged lions stand in pearl-ringed circles, ochre on deep charcoal, framed by a border of palmettes and stars. They're not here to be locked away. They're here to keep watch over the chair you read in, the bed you dream in, and the one who keeps them.

Inspired by

An original Old Heaven design, inspired by, not a reproduction of, a museum textile.

Our starting point was Cloth of gold with winged lions and griffins, woven in Central Asia between about 1225 and 1275 and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum calls it the most resplendent example known of the cloths of gold the Mongol empire made as emblems of imperial authority.

It was woven where worlds met. The paired lions in roundels come from Iran, the clouds curling on their wings from China. The museum believes Iranian and Chinese craftsmen made it together with local artisans in an imperial workshop. Its gold was laid on paper, an Asian method, and woven in lampas, a technique Iranian weavers developed and that was adopted far beyond Iran.

Cloth like this was worn at the Mongol court, sent as imperial gifts, and traded west. Europeans called these silks panni tartarici, and a pope's treasury in 1295 counted vestments made from them.

In the Persian tradition behind this design, the lion guarded kings and sacred places. The griffin, in a story already old when Herodotus told it, guards gold. We kept the winged lions and the colour of gold; the griffins, the silk and the gold thread stay in Cleveland.

This throw is for the person who keeps a treasure in daily use instead of behind glass. For whoever is the quiet guardian of a home, the one who remembers the old stories, and who knows a thing gains meaning by being lived with. You don't just decorate. You keep watch.

Details

• Jacquard-woven, not printed: the design is woven into the cloth from 100% cotton yarn.
• The back shows the same design with the colours reversed.
• Fringed edges in mixed yarn colours; fringe length may vary slightly.
• Sizes: 52 × 37 in, 60 × 50 in or 54 × 70 in (may vary by up to 2.5 in).
• On the 54 × 70 in and 52 × 37 in throws, a sacred date palm stands between each pair of lions.
• Woven in the USA.
• Woven colour comes from a fixed set of yarns, so tones read slightly softer than on screen. The gold is yarn colour, not metallic.
• Care: machine wash cold (max 30°C / 86°F) on gentle with mild detergent, non-chlorine bleach only, tumble dry low.

Artwork by Shawn Neville.

Inspiration: Cloth of gold with winged lions and griffins, Central Asia, 1225–75, unknown weavers. Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1989.50 (CC0 open access).

Made with AI assistance, following human aesthetic, mythic and historical direction.