Author Description

Companion to The Art of Central Asia: the Stein Collection in the British Museum by Roderick Whitfield, these volumes (Les Arts de L'Asie Centrale published by the Reunion des Musees Nationaux) present the entire collection of Central Asian art recovered during the travels of the French explorer and scholar Paul Pelliot (1878-1945). Most of the collection's paintings, sculptures and textiles come from a walled-up rock chapel in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas at Dunhuang, the most extensive of Central Asia's rock temple complexes at the edge of the Taklamakan desert in Gansu Province, China. Dating from the early-8th to the 11th centuries, they had been concealed for almost a millenium.