ANONYMOUS (JAPAN, 14TH CENTURY)

In the Kamakura period, practices focused on attaining birth in the Buddha Amida’s Western Paradise became widespread, and many small embroideries like this one were produced for intimate, individual devotional practice and deathbed ritual. Small in scale, they were intended for a personal altar. Amida descends to welcome the deceased, accompanied by the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi. The needleworker substituted human hair for silk thread in places, a practice common in scrolls used during ceremonies following the death of a devotee, when prayers were offered for safe birth in Amida’s Pure Land.
Two similar embroidered Amida triads, dated to the thirteenth century, are in the Mary Griggs Burke Collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Harry G. C. Packard Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In both, however, the deities are shown not in human form, but as sacred Sanskrit seed syllables, against a solidly worked blue background. Both are faded and worn, as in the Utterberg example, and have considerable restoration.