QIANLONG PERIOD (1736-1795)

The color scheme of this suit of armor—white silk satin bordered with dark blue—indicates that it would have been worn by a foot soldier in the Inner Banner of the imperial guard, tasked with protecting the imperial palace. Although similar in construction to sets used in battle, this armor is purely ceremonial and likely commissioned by Emperor Qianlong for his grand review of the imperial army which occurred every three years on a parade ground south of the Forbidden City. During this ceremony, also known as the Book of Shields, each regiment of the Manchu Banner Army would be arranged by rank, and each soldier would wear uniforms in the colors of their Banner, manifesting in an elaborate display of Qing imperial authority. In the eleventh year of his reign, the Qianlong Emperor commissioned a series of four large handscrolls to commemorate this triennial event, the third of which was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 26 April 2004, lot 1011.

Despite the mass production of these suits for routine ceremonies, few survive, especially in private hands. A nearly identical set with an inscription dating the suit to the thirty-first year of Qianlong’s reign (1766) was sold in The Imperial Wardrobe: Fine Chinese Costume and Textiles from the Linda Wrigglesworth Collection; Christie’s New York, 19 March 2008, lot 40 and again at Christie’s New York, 19 September 2014, lot 1094. Another from a private collection was exhibited at the Hong Kong Museum of Art in Heaven’s Embroidered Cloths, One Thousand Years of Chinese Textiles, Hong Kong, 1995, and is illustrated in the catalogue, p. 239. A comparable suit in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in La Cité Interdite, Paris, 1996, pp. 136-9, no. 3.