Page 12 - Chiense TExtiles, MET MUSEUM Pub 1934

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
choice, with human beings it is quite a different matter-
they have been forced to create the ornaments which
nature has denied them. And while clothes have for a
long time been of importance to the races of this world,
never have they been developed to such an all-embracing
indication of the wearer's place in the social order as
they were at a very early date in China.
The great mass of Chinese textiles which have been
preserved dates from the Ch'ing dynasty (r644-r9r2),
and here the complications and extent of the problem
are bewildering, for we find not only the various robes
prescribed for the emperor at the state ceremonies but
also costumes for princes of all ranks, for husbands of
daughters of the emperor by the empress and by concu-
bines as well; for nobles of the blood, and for eighteen
ranking officials, nine civil and nine military; for serv-
ants and eunuchs, for Chinese and Manchus, for mer-
chants and coolies, for actors and prostitutes; and the
worst of it is that, rigid as these regulations were, most
of them were never properly written down but were to
a great extent transmitted by custom. The Ta Ch'ing
'
Hui Tien ("Institutions of the Ch'ing Dynasty") gives a
certain number of sumptuary laws, but it is by no means
complete, and the student has to deal with the most care-
free explanations of scholars (many of them actually ex-
officials), to whom it had never occurred to think about
the why and wherefore of the clothes they themselves
wore, and with the yarns of Chinese dealers and teachers
bent on pleasing their clients and entirely uninterested

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