CLASSICAL CHINESE CARPETS

Maria Schulz

Longevity

78 I HALI 144

and the Textile Museum in Washington DC. But the majority are scattered in small numbers among museums and private collections. So the reunion of 68 of these pieces in one place provided a unique opportunity to cast an eye over this fascinating and expressive medium. The exhibition was arranged according to two guidelines, date and iconography, which developed in parallel. The first thing that one saw was the Orient Stars fragment mentioned above, which is of obvious historical value and whose design appears to represent a tiger-skin. However the first true visual contact with the carpets was overwhelming: three imposing carpets from the second half of the 16th century all of which were clearly made for court use as they show various renderings of the dragon, symbol of the emperor himself (1). The most intense of these fascinating pieces, a square nearly seven metres across, almost certainly once covered the throne platform in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the most important room in the Forbidden City, and is therefore of major historical significance. Production of carpets for the imperial residences did not cease when the Manchus came to power. There was a flowering of pile weaving in China in the 17th century. In large part this was due to the second Qing emperor, Kangxi (r.1662-1722), who fostered the sciences and arts in general, and encouraged the production of pile carpets by weaving communities in and around Ningxia in northwestern China. The main body of the exhibition mainly consisted of carpets made between 1650 and 1750, classified and subdivided in the various galleries according to their design typology. First came floral motifs (3), in which sundry representations of the peony and lotus triumphed, particularly a large fragment on which butterflies flutter in a tangle of lotus leaves and blossoms

4. Above: Gallery hung with carpets featuring bats on a ground of swastika meanders including (left), a Ningxia carpet, early 18th century. 1.74 x 2.82m (5'9" x 9'3"), Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne and (right), a Ningxia carpet, last quarter 17th century, 2.79 x 3.28m (9'2" x 10'9"). Private collection, Tessin

5. Middle left: Seat cover, Ningxia, ca. 1740. 0.69 x 0.71m (2'3" x 2'4"). Michael and Judith Steinhardt Collection, New York

6. Bottom left: Seat cover, Ningxia, late 17th century, 0.78 x 0.80m (2'7" x 2.8") Private collection, Chicago
7. Right: Carpet with lilies, Xinjiang, 18th century. All silk, 0.99 x 1.49m (3'3" x 4'11"). ThyssenBornemisza Collection

8. Below: Gallery hung with carpets with geometric field designs and period furniture

against an ethereal ground that falls somewhere between pink and ivory. To digress for a moment on the subject of the colouring of such pieces, many classical Chinese carpets, whether of the Ming or the early Qing periods, originally had a deep red ground. This can be seen in ‘ancestor’ paintings of emperors and courtiers, some on display in this exhibition, including one (2) showing a noblewoman of the Qianlong period (1736-1795) seated on a 17th century chair set placed, in its turn, on a redground carpet with a stylised floral design, possibly dating from the 15th century. The fact is that the red used by Chinese dyers was highly unstable, oxidising rapidly and taking on a whole range of shades between ochre and pale yellow. The result is a type of ton-surton that certain contemporary interior designers find so pleasing, but that has very little to do with the original intent. This type of fading is almost absent in silk carpets and two of the latter, both from the ThyssenBornemisza Collection, were in Cologne: a Ningxia carpet with peonies and a fantastic small rug featuring yellow lilies that was very probably made in Xinjiang (7). There followed a series of carpets in a wide variety of formats, from small rugs for seating to large covers for raised platforms (kang), as well as round formats, organised according to pattern type. Dragons, not rendered naturalistically as in Ming carpets but in a more graphic manner, are typical of the Kangxi era, sometimes achieving a highly abstract appearance (5, 6,

Longevity

CLASSICAL CHINESE CARPETS

Maria Schulz

HALI 144 I 79