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