Tang Red 22 Lunar Bloom Nishijin Top-Handle Bag

Due to the rarity of this Lunar Bloom Nishijin-ori Brocade, only 28 pieces are made, each with its own serial number. 

Your Tang Heritage Bag will include:

1. Gold Metal Authenticity Card (To Certify A Tang Heritage Original)

2. Unique Engraved Serial Number

3. Complimentary Premium Gift Packaging

Long before the moon became a subject for painters, Tang dynasty weavers were setting it into silk. The roundel, known as the moon wheel (月轮), was the governing form of court textile design in the 7th and 8th centuries: a perfect circle repeated across the ground, each one holding a flowering spray at the height of its season. The circle carried the meaning it carries still, that of wholeness and reunion (团圆), while the flowers within it turned through spring, summer, autumn and winter, so that a single length of cloth held the entire year at once.

When continental looms and pattern books travelled east, the moon wheel travelled with them, and it has been woven without interruption in Kyoto ever since. The Tang Red 22 Lunar Bloom Nishijin Top-Handle Bag brings that form back to the tradition it came from, and is made to be kept.

The Motif · Lunar Bloom (月轮四季花)

Here the moon wheels are woven at a scale generous enough to overlap, so the discs surface and recede across the panel the way a moon moves behind thin cloud. Each holds its own flowering spray, worked in coral, lilac and pale blue against fields of soft gold, and the ground between them is filled with scrolling vine (唐草) and the interlocking circles of the seven treasures (七宝), both carried out of Buddhist decoration and into Chinese and Japanese weaving alike. Because the pattern is built in the weave rather than printed onto it, the gold shifts as the bag turns in the hand, and each disc reads as full or as shadowed depending on where the light falls.

Nishijin Weaving (西阵织)

The panel is Nishijin-ori (西阵织), the brocade of the Nishijin district in northwestern Kyoto, whose looms descend from sericulture and silk weaving techniques carried over from the Asian continent in the 5th and 6th centuries and refined across more than 1,200 years of court patronage. Every thread is dyed before it reaches the loom, so the pattern is assembled colour by colour within the cloth itself rather than laid onto its surface. The tradition was designated a national traditional craft in 1976, and remains one of the few silk brocades in the world still produced in small runs on individually dressed looms.

Woven silk of this density holds a crisp edge without stiffness, and resists the flattening that printed textiles show at the fold. The panel is set into cowhide, which carries the structure of the bag and takes the wear at the corners, so the brocade is protected where a bag is handled most.

Key Features

• The moon wheel (月轮). The governing roundel of Tang court textile design, and one of the oldest continuously woven forms in East Asia.
• Wholeness and reunion (团圆). The unbroken circle is the classical blessing for a family kept together and a life kept complete.
• The whole year in one cloth. Each roundel holds a different season's flowering, a wish for abundance that never falls out of season.
• A Tang form, woven in Kyoto. A pattern that left China on continental looms and returns here through the house that shares its lineage.
• More than 1,200 years at the loom. Nishijin weaving has supplied the Kyoto court since the founding of Heian-kyo in 794.
• Woven, never printed. Colour is set thread by thread before weaving, so the pattern cannot rub, crack or fade from the surface.

Premium Materials

• Premium cowhide leather, used for the flap, handle, gussets and piping, with a soft matte finish that deepens gently with wear.
• Nishijin-ori silk brocade (西阵织), woven in Kyoto with gold-toned supplementary weft, set as the front and side panels.
• Light gold-tone hardware, a slim rectangular flap catch and capped handle mounts, kept deliberately spare so the weave carries the eye.

Product Details

• Dimensions: Length 22cm, Width 11.5cm, Height 16cm
• Handle height: 9cm
• Weight: 0.56kg
• Exterior: Nishijin-ori silk brocade panels with cowhide leather flap, gussets and trim
• Carry: Rolled top handle, 9cm drop
• Hardware: Light gold-tone, rectangular flap catch with capped handle mounts
• Colourways: Pine Green (松绿)

Every Bag Is One of a Kind

Each panel is cut by hand from a continuous woven bolt, so no two bags carry the pattern in quite the same place. One may take a full moon wheel across its front, another may catch a flowering spray at the fold. Placement will differ subtly from the product images while the overall aesthetic stays faithful to them. Measurements are taken by hand, and a variance of 1 to 2 cm is normal.

Authenticity and Craft

Every Tang Heritage piece arrives with a metal authenticity card, engraved with its own unique serial number and logged in our records, verifiable directly with us at any time. It is your assurance that what you carry is genuine, traceable, and made to be kept. For the length of your life, and perhaps for the generations that follow.