Location: British Museum

Albrecht Dürer, The Triumphal Arch or Arch ...

by Dr. Larry Silver

Fatimid goldsmiths may have been inspired to use cloisonné enamel-work by imitating contemporary enameled gold jewelry from Byzantium.

Gold pendant with inset enamel decoration
by The British Museum

This luxury pen-case is made from papier mâché with lacquer painting, a tradition inspired by Chinese lacquer.

Lacquer pen-case, signed by the artist Ashraf ...
by The British Museum

This embroidery, discovered at Dunhuang, dates from China’s Tang dynasty (618–907) and depicts the Buddha preaching at Vulture Peak – in Buddhist tradition a favorite retreat of the Buddha and his disciples.

Buddha preaching at Vulture Peak embroidery
by The British Museum

A fragmentary silk painting tells us about Buddhist art along the Silk Roads, numerous Buddhist sacred icons, and the complex life of an object after its creation.

A silk painting of sacred Buddhist images ...
by Zhenru Zhou

Positioned at the crossroads of Asia, Gandhara has always been an ancient transit zone—as we see in this sculpture of the Buddha

Head of the Buddha, Gandhara
by The British Museum

The huge size of the canvas, the dynamic and decorative lines, and the combination of mineral colors are typical of Buddhist paintings from Korea.

Dhratarastra, Guardian King of the East
by The British Museum

This handscroll is an extremely valuable example of Korean calligraphy

Yun Baek-ha, a calligraphic handscroll
by The British Museum

Earlier Korean portraits were more interested in capturing a sense of the sitter's 'spirit' rather than in portraying an actual physical likeness such as this one from the 18th century

Yi Che-gwan, Portrait of a Confucian scholar
by The British Museum

This wooden coffin in the form of eagle with painted gold feather markings was made in the village of Teshie in Ghana.

Coffin in the shape of an eagle
by The British Museum

In medieval Korea, wine bottles were known as maebyong, which comes from the Chinese mei-ping ('vase for plum blossoms'), a misnomer dubbed by Chinese scholars of the Qing dynasty.

Maebyong vases, an introduction
by The British Museum

Kabuki theatre's leading actors influenced fashion and taste and quickly became the subject of popular woodblock prints in Japan

Kabuki actor prints
by The British Museum

A casket made for secular use is decorated with lively scenes of combat, music, dance and love.

Casket with troubadours
by The British Museum

The anonymous figure depicted in this painting embodies the fashion of Isfahan, Iran’s capital city under the rule of Shah 'Abbas I

Riza-yi ‘Abbasi, portrait of a young page ...
by The British Museum

The single page format of this painting shows the trend among seventeenth-century art patrons to collect particularly fine examples of drawing, painting or calligraphy on single pages

Mir Afzal of Tun, a reclining woman ...
by The British Museum

Riza-yi ʿAbbasi is famous for his drawings of individual or paired figures on single pages

Riza-yi ʿAbbasi, Seated calligrapher
by The British Museum

Sesshu Toyo's painting involves a remarkable economy of brushwork, often called haboku (broken ink) or hatsuboku (flung ink).

Sessō Tōyō, Haboku-style landscape
by The British Museum

An array of items from the scholar's decorate this type of Korean screen

Chaekgeori-type screen
by The British Museum

The finely carved wooden bowl is shaped like a bird and was used as a container for sweet drink.

Inlaid bird bowl, from Belau
by The British Museum

Between 1400 and 1200 B.C.E. the Hittites established one of the great empires of the ancient Middle East.

Hittites, an introduction
by The British Museum

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