Unless otherwise stated, I own or have previously owned all items listed in this collection.
Antique Chinese Textiles
- Show: Celebration of Silk
“The Friends of the Chinese University Art Gallery and Jenny Lewis welcomes you to this splendid tribute to the grandeur of Chinese Silk. This film shows a unique combination of several Chinese art forms – textiles, music, song and verse – designed to present the visual excitement of silk in movement, and the reticent elegance of courtly demeanour.” - The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci
Assisted costume designer James Acheson, and supplied most of the original Qing Dynasty textiles. - Qing Dynasty Men’s Robes
12 items. All sold. - Qing Dynasty Women’s Robes
15 robes. All sold. - Qing Dynasty Women’s Surcoats
10 items. - Republic Women’s Qipao Suits
- Qing Dynasty Women’s Short Robes, Vests, and Waistcoats
18 items. - Qing Dynasty Women’s Jackets
17 jackets. 9 for sale. - Qing Dynasty Women’s Skirts
13 items. - Qing Dynasty Women’s Paired Skirt Panels
19 items. - Qing Dynasty Women’s Sleeve Panels
24 items. - Qing Dynasty Purses
29 items. - Qing Dynasty Framed Collars and Purses Collection
For sale as a collection - Qing Dynasty Tribute Silks
Antique Japanese Textiles
This collection ranges from imperial robes, religious vestments, and interior furnishings to the woven and embroidered sleeve bands used to finish or replace damaged sleeves. They not only reflect the power and wealth they symbolized as status garments, but are also exquisite and complex material documentation of the technological creativity behind various weaving techniques and embroidery styles. As such, they are evidence of the skills of the thousands of anonymous women and men who worked the looms and embroidery frames in imperial and private manufactures and in their own homes. We may not know their names, but we cherish their work to this day.
Chinese emperors valued the power of silk as status vestments, diplomatic gifts, and currency of emolument and indemnity. And since antiquity, China’s philosophers used the process of silk weaving as a metaphor for a successful rule: A well-ordered state relied on unimpeded work flow in the production processes of agriculture and sericulture (silk cultivation). These pillars of societal order were inextricably connected to the seasons. Therefore, every dynasty’s administration saw its role as steward, keeping order in the ‘central kingdom’ in relationships among people, with nature, and ultimately with cosmic forces to bring about the harmony necessary to maintain a prosperous and flourishing society. Order in agriculture sustained the people and the government, just like the order of warp and weft threads on a loom are indispensable for the creation of any fabric. This explains why emperors made agriculture and sericulture into a political program for educating the people, which is documented in illustrated albums that found their way into the art of China, Korea, and Japan.