The Goshoguruma-Kiku — Japanese Ceremonial Silk Wall Tapestry, Imperial Carriage and Chrysanthemums in Champagne Gold

The imperial carriage in a garden of gold. The most botanically rich piece in the Renaras collection.

At a glance: A fukuro obi in soft Nishijin gold, the imperial carriage among peonies and chrysanthemums, mounted between hardwood bars at about 60 × 32 cm. One exists. Japanese ceremonial silk, finished at the Renaras atelier, Amsterdam; ships worldwide.

The Goshoguruma-Kiku is a wall tapestry mounted from a fukuro-obi (袋帯) woven in the Nishijin (西陣) tradition, its ground a fine metallic gold over pale champagne silk — not the bright gold of kinran brocade but something softer and more diffused, the colour of morning light on aged ivory. At the centre stands the goshoguruma (御所車), the ox-drawn carriage of the imperial court, reserved for the highest nobility. Around it, a full botanical composition: botan (牡丹), peonies in dense, layered bloom; kiku (菊), the chrysanthemum, crest of the Imperial House itself; matsu (松), pine, arching above the carriage in the highest register.

The flowers are not woven but embroidered — built up in fine knotted and looped stitches that give each petal its own surface relief, so the peonies and chrysanthemums rise from the champagne ground and cast their own faint shadows. The carriage and pine are woven into the obi structure itself. Two techniques, one surface.

The Renaras atelier cut a length from the obi, redesigned the composition for vertical wall format, and lined the reverse with undyed support cloth to carry both the woven and the embroidered weight. The silk is mounted between handmade hardwood bars at top and bottom, finished with a leather hanging cord, and arrives ready to hang. The bars are part of the work, not a separate acquisition. Nothing on the visible surface has been altered; weave and embroidery stand as they were made. This is the Renaras mottainai — new imagination brought into a living tradition.

The Goshoguruma-Kiku is the warmest piece in the collection. Its champagne gold sits with ivory, aged linen, warm stone, pale oak and patinated brass — materials that improve with age. It belongs in a principal room that already has character: a drawing room, a library, a bedroom in a house that has been lived in long enough to know what it is, the dining room of a restaurant where every detail has been chosen.

Each tapestry arrives with its passport from the atelier — a small handmade record of the silk's first life and its transformation, signed and dated in Amsterdam.

For private viewings and hospitality enquiries, contact the atelier. Ships worldwide.

One silk. One story. One piece. Never repeated.