Lot Essay
The present lot is reputedly from the Imperial Palace in Nanjing, constructed under the first Ming dynasty emperor Hongwu. The Palace was destroyed by fire in the 15th Century but was revived during the twilight years of the Ming dynasty. It was destroyed again in the 1860s during the Taiping rebellion.
It is highly unusual to find Imperial silk-velvet carpets woven in this technique with dragon motifs as published examples are more commonly decorated with flowers and birds. Compare to two floral examples, the first a rectangular silk-velvet carpet composed of three vertical panels with lotus-flowerheads sold in our New York Rooms, 2 June 1989, lot 376; and the other dated to the Kangxi period in the Jaehne Collection, included in the exhibition of Chinese Art from the Newark Museum, China Institute in America, 1980, illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 56, fig. 34. It has been suggested that the Chinese silk velvets were influenced by Spanish velvet textiles which were probably imported by the Portuguese at the beginning of the sixteenth century, ibid.
Luxury carpets of this fine material would have been made in limited quantity. The main areas of production were located in South China in particular Zhangzhou, Fujian province, which made velvet for tribute to the imperial court, and Nanking in Jiangsu province, as discussed by Harold Burnham, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Art and Archaelogy Division, Occasional Paper, no. 2, 1959.
(US$64,000-100,000)
It is highly unusual to find Imperial silk-velvet carpets woven in this technique with dragon motifs as published examples are more commonly decorated with flowers and birds. Compare to two floral examples, the first a rectangular silk-velvet carpet composed of three vertical panels with lotus-flowerheads sold in our New York Rooms, 2 June 1989, lot 376; and the other dated to the Kangxi period in the Jaehne Collection, included in the exhibition of Chinese Art from the Newark Museum, China Institute in America, 1980, illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 56, fig. 34. It has been suggested that the Chinese silk velvets were influenced by Spanish velvet textiles which were probably imported by the Portuguese at the beginning of the sixteenth century, ibid.
Luxury carpets of this fine material would have been made in limited quantity. The main areas of production were located in South China in particular Zhangzhou, Fujian province, which made velvet for tribute to the imperial court, and Nanking in Jiangsu province, as discussed by Harold Burnham, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Art and Archaelogy Division, Occasional Paper, no. 2, 1959.
(US$64,000-100,000)