The private Museum — the Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal — has a large Japanese embroidery with four phoenixes that dates back to the 19th century. It is made of silk and gold threads. In Asia, the Phoenix is imperial house, fire, justice, sun, obedience, fidelity, or constellations of the Southern star. This is widely considered a good omen. Asian phoenixes are usually depicted in active poses with gracefully curved wings and tails with long feathers. Nowadays, phoenix is also a popular motif for tattoos.

Penny Peters writes, "I was able to photograph (without flash) embroidery that measures maybe 4x5 feet. Even though it was mounted under glass, placing my camera lens right on the glass allowed me to get good close-ups of the embroidery and look at the details".

All embroidery is made of silk threads of different sizes with the addition of gold threads. The embroidery was made in various techniques: decking, braiding, coaching, giving volume and the effect of the thread. If these techniques interest you, the Japanese Embroidery Center in Atlanta, Georgia, published a book called "The Techniques of Japanese Embroidery" by Shuji Tamura, 1998.

Let's look at this embroidery in detail.

Thank you for your attention!