Page 53 - Chiense TExtiles, MET MUSEUM Pub 1934

CHINESE TEXTILES
from Tibet they are between one and two hundred years
earlier than any of the purely Chinese examples, which
may indicate that the stitches came to China from Tibet,
or at least via Tibet. The subject depicted on the temple
banner is a representation of the goddess Tara, and al-
though the iconography is rather muddled the colors
and needlework are exquisite. This banner is earlier
than most of the painted ones and is therefore of docu-
mentary importance in the study of Buddhistic history
as well as of textiles.
In a seventeenth-century temple valance from the
Havemeyer Collection, a detail of which is shown in fig-
ure II, the Florentine stitch is used, and likewise in a
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beautiful eighteenth-century theatrical robe, of which a
detail is illustrated in figure 13. The all-over patterns of
both the valance and the robe are made to simulate bro-
cade designs, and the effect is that of solid weaving.
Against the background of the all-over pattern the tern-_
ple valance has in addition a design of conventionalized
walking dragons embroidered in couched gold thread
faintly outlined with black. The robe has a very curious
pattern of bats worked in pairs, one apparently repre-
senting the bat and the other an evanescent illusion
or shadow of the reality. The bat motives are in the
Florentine stitch and actually form an integral part of
the embroidery although they give the impression of
l1 This truly magnificent specimen, which was shown in the ex-
hibition in 1931 as a loan from Louis V. Ledoux, has since been
acquired by the Museum.
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