NORTH CHINA, KANGXI PERIOD (1662-1722)

This strikingly lustrous Chinese carpet displays eight floral roundels, each centered with a shou (longevity) symbol, on a faint diagonal swastika lattice ground upon which there are stylised bats and flowers. The reign of the Kangxi Emperor (1662-1722) was a period of great achievement for all the arts, and carpets woven during this period are celebrated for their harmony and proportion both in coloration and size. Woven for both the Imperial court and nobility, Qing dynasty rugs were often made for a specific place or function. Based on the use of the symbolic motifs and its rectangular format, this carpet was most probably made as a dais or throne platform (kang) cover that typically would have been reserved for an important guest within a palace or placed within a temple. In her article on Chinese temple rugs (HALI 194, pp.662-75), Sandra Whitman has proposed that altar rugs were placed across the altar and not along the top. A closely related example, displaying eight similar lotus roundels on a geometric ground, which had formerly been in a mid-western museum collection, was exhibited with Alberto Levi, 'Hunting and Gathering: China, Tibet and East Turkestan', 2017, Milan, (HALI, Issue 185, p.112, fig.1).