OSAKA--A 19th-century folding screen with links to the Korean royal court has found a new home in New York, having survived Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula as well as the Korean War.

The 10-panel screen, 4.91 meters wide and 2.14 meters tall, was likely created by artisans of the royal court of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

The panels are elaborately embroidered in golden silk thread with images of bronzeware used during religious rites in ancient China, such as bells and three-legged “ding” vessels.

“Chinese bronzeware was highly treasured in the Joseon Dynasty as a symbol of wealth and power,” said Kenichi Osawa, director of the Osaka Museum of History. “An artwork embroidered with similar bronzeware images, which is labor-consuming to create, is extremely rare. In all likelihood, no similar article survives even in South Korea.”

The artwork, which was owned by Shin Gi-su, an ethnic Korean historian in Japan, was entrusted to the museum’s care after it opened in Osaka’s Chuo Ward in 2001.

The folding screen left for New York in August after it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which possesses types of ancient Chinese bronzeware depicted on it. It is scheduled to be displayed at a special exhibition in spring 2023.

The “folding screen embroidered with images of ancient bronzeware” dates from the second half of the 19th century, a time of upheaval in East Asia.

Han Myo-sook, the screen’s previous owner, had married into the family related to Queen Min, posthumously known as Empress Myeongseong, who was assassinated in 1895 by Japanese military officers and others under the command of the Japanese minister to Korea.

The folding screen was kept at the family’s residence throughout Japan’s colonial rule (1910-1945) and the ravages of the Korean War (1950-1953), according to Rika Shin, Shin Gi-su’s second daughter, who interviewed Han.

Shin, who died in 2002, had told his daughter that he acquired the folding screen in 1991 at the behest of a former Japanese diplomat, not on his own initiative.

A London-based researcher for documentary programs, Rika, 57, was curious to learn why it ended up crossing the straits.

Rika began exploring its origins after she went to study in the land of her ancestors and tracked down Han, who was living in Los Angeles, in 2012.

Han, who died in 2017, said she had no choice but to ask her younger sister to dispose of the folding screen when she married a U.S. military officer in 1964 and moved overseas.

The former Japanese diplomat, who was stationed in South Korea at the time, agreed to take charge of the screen.

Shin, who aspired to serve as a bridge between Japan and Korea, kept the artwork from slipping into obscurity and possibly being lost to history.

More than 140 items from Shin’s collection, including works of calligraphy and paintings, have been kept at the Osaka Museum of History.

But the folding screen remained in its underground repository after it was shown during an exchange exhibition at the Daegu National Museum in South Korea in 2010, the centenary of Japan’s annexation of the Korean Peninsula.

“There was no other folding screen associated with the royal court in Shin’s collection, so it was not easy to create opportunities to display only this one,” Osawa said.

The folding screen saw the light of day in an unexpected fashion.

A curator with the Metropolitan Museum of Art who was visiting the Osaka Museum of History in February last year asked Rika if the museum could add the artwork to its collection as it represents cultural links in East Asia.

“The folding screen is a living witness to the turbulent history of East Asia,” Rika told herself at the time. “The artwork could be appreciated from diverse viewpoints if it were to go to a melting pot of races, rather than being kept in Japan or South Korea.”

Shin, a historian with no institutional affiliation, uncovered documents and materials concerning “Joseon Tongsinsa” diplomatic missions, which the Korean dynasty sent on 12 occasions to Japan during the Edo Period (1603-1867).

He also created video works, including “Korean missions of the Edo Period,” a 1979 documentary movie that had an impact on the way the Korean envoys were depicted in school textbooks. A second-generation ethnic Korean born in Kyoto, Shin was influenced by famed film director Nagisa Oshima, a friend who also hailed from the ancient capital.

“Ties between Japan and Korea go back a millennium in history,” Rika quoted her father as telling her all the time. “When you take action, you should be looking not just at an unhappy 50 years of the past but also toward the future 100 years down the road.”

Rika said: “I hope the folding screen, which has awakened from its long sleep, will weave out a new story of peace with people of the world.”