MING DYNASTY, 17TH CENTURY

See Lot 1344 for a silk of identical pattern. The 'Goat Rider' group of silks celebrate the approach of Spring, the prunus blossoms marking the death of Winter. The goat or sheep is the eighth symbolic animal of the Twelve Terrestial Branches, and the emblem of a retired life. The imagery is based on a Song or Yuan dynasty design, as exemplified in the Song embroidered scroll Nine Rams Chasing Away the Cold, in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, and in a similar Yuan scroll in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This same design on a red ground was formerly in the Maeda Family Collection cf Kenre, 'Famed-Fabrics from China, India and Southeast Asia', Shiko-sha, Kyoto, 1979, vol. 1, p. 59, pl. 29. 'Textile Designs of Japan Vol. III, Okinawan, Ainu & Foreign Designs', Tokyo, 1980, fig. 160, 2).