Bamboo and wooden slips from Dunhuang, Gansu province. [Photo/Dunhuang Converged Media Center]

The 2026 exhibition Reviving Craft: Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Design opened at Somerset House in London on Sept 16.

The event is rooted in Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist traditions and features three sections. Dunhuang, a key site along the ancient Silk Road, showcased its millennium-old culture and Eastern aesthetics.

Located at the western end of the Hexi Corridor, Dunhuang has over 2,100 years of history, dating back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

For centuries, Dunhuang was a meeting point for Chinese, Indian, Greek and Persian cultures, leaving a rich Silk Road heritage that includes cave art, ancient manuscripts, frontier sites and folk traditions. This heritage reflects the openness and cultural exchange that characterized the Silk Road.

The Dunhuang Museum displayed selected replicas. A replica of a Tang Dynasty (618-907) brick depicting an exotic man leading a camel reflects ancient Silk Road trade. A replica of the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch reproduces its stitched binding format and artistic value.

Dunhuang cultural creative products, made with Fan Yanyan Silk Art Center, apply mural elements such as the nine-colored deer, three hares, flying apsaras and rebounding pipa to scarves, tea sets and paper-carving stationery. The exhibition runs until Sept 27.