Page 92 - Fine Chinese Art Bonhams London May 2018

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
士紳藏品

74
A RARE IMPERIAL YELLOW-GROUND EMBROIDERED
‘NINE DRAGON’ KANG CUSHION COVER
Qianlong
Of rectangular form, delicately worked in shades of red, blue, green,
and white satin stitch and couched gold threads with a full-frontal
five-clawed dragon coiled around a flaming pearl, flanked by eight
ferocious dragons in different poses, all leaping amidst leafy lotus
scrolls and trailing clouds, all within a border of turbulent waves and
terrestrial diagrams surrounded by a key-fret band, the outer border
with alternating designs of phoenixes and bats on further floral scrolls,
framed and glazed.
190cm x 105cm (74 3/4in x 41in).

£30,000 - 50,000
CNY270,000 - 450,000 (invoice)

清乾隆 明黃地緞繡九龍紋炕面

Provenance: Spink & Son, Ltd., London, 16 January 1953, according
to which it was “Taken from a table in the private apartments of the
Empress T’zu-Hsi, during the Boxer Rebellion, 1900.”
An English private collection

來源：
於1953年1月16日購自倫敦古董商Spink & Son, Ltd.，帳單上註明：
「於1900年庚子拳亂期間得自慈禧太后寢宮」
英國私人收藏

Delicately woven with nine five-clawed dragons pursuing flaming pearls,
this brilliant cover evokes multiple layers of auspicious meanings relating
to the figure of the empress and her quest of attaining immortality.
Capable of flying high in the sky and diving back in the sea, dragons
were, since the earliest phases of Chinese history, seen as intermediaries
between Heaven and Earth and regarded as vehicles transporting
humans to immortal realms. According to the ‘Book of Songs’, compiled
in the third century BC, dragons represent victory over the forces of
darkness, cast light onto the Gate of Heaven and allow one to glimpse
the wondrous residence of immortal beings. Complementing the design,
the phoenix, symbolic of the empress, inhabited the immortal lands of
the Queen Mother of the West, source of eternal light and the profusion
of lotus, symbolic of Buddhist enlightenment, recalls the floral showers
that accompanied the birth of the Buddha.

The refinement of the embroidery characterising the present cover
suggests that it may have been produced during the reign of the
Qianlong emperor, when the silk industry reached the highest
standards of its aesthetic development. Compare with a yellow-
ground silk cover embroidered with designs of nine dragons, 18th
century, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrated by V.Wilson,
Chinese Textiles, London, 2005, pl.39. A yellow-ground cover for a
stool, decorated with similar designs of dragons, phoenix and bats
and dated to the second or third quarter of the eighteenth in the Art
Institute of Chicago, is illustrated by J.Vollmer, Clothed to Rule the
Universe, Chicago, 2000, p.26, pl.VII.

A much smaller yellow-ground silk ‘dragon’ throne seat cover, 18th
century, was sold at Sotheby’s New York, 17 September 2013, lot 238.

For details of the charges payable in addition to the final Hammer Price of each Lot
88 | BONHAMS please refer to paragraphs 7 & 8 of the Notice to Bidders at the back of the catalogue.