Page 115 - Chinese and japanese porcelain silk and lacquer Canepa

Discussion [2.4] The rich, exuberant and colourful Chinese silk textiles used to make ecclesiastical

vestments discussed above seem to be in sharp contrast to the sumptuary laws against
luxury dress and ornamentation passed in the Iberian Peninsula at the time. In Portugal,
sumptuary laws were first passed by King John III in 1535, and then again by King
Sebastian I in 1560, both of the royal House of Avis-Beja. In Spain, the sumptuary
laws passed repeatedly by the Habsburg kings appear to have strongly influenced the
consumer reception and use of Chinese silks. King Philip II passed sumptuary laws
eight times between 1563 and 1594. From 1580, when King Philip II also became
King Philip I of Portugal, the sumptuary laws he passed also applied to the inhabitants
of Portugal. Textual sources have revealed, however, that in Spain, like in Portugal,
the royalty, high-ranking nobility and clergy were exempted from sumptuary laws.
Chinese silks were shipped from New Spain to Spain especially for the King and other
members of the royal Habsburg court in the early 1570s, and woven silks were sent as
private consignments ordered by individuals working for the court in the early 1590s.
King Philip III not only passed four sumptuary laws during his reign but also set a
royal example to his subjects in expressing sobriety on special occasions. In 1600, the
King even forced many plebeians to declare the silks and other luxury goods they
owned before a notary. King Philip IV passed a series of sumptuary laws in the first
It has been shown in this study that sometime in the second half of the sixteenth months of 1623 but interestingly, a proclamation was issued on 22nd March of that
century Chinese silk lampas finely woven with a repeated design of a crowned, double- year which suspended the implementation of the law. This was only due to political
headed eagle, a symbol of the Habsburg rulers of Spain and Portugal, in combination and dynastical interests of the King, who in an attempt to marry Princess Maria Ana
with interlocking floral scrolls that are undoubtedly Chinese in style, were cut and with Charles Stuart, Prince of Wales, the second son of King James I of England,
sawn into ecclesiastical vestments for the Catholic Church. The use of Chinese silks allowed the capital city of Madrid to display the great wealth and status of the Spanish
made to order with a mix of cultural references at the time is attested by a cope in monarchy during his lengthy visit, which lasted eight months.
the Royal Ontario Museum and two finely woven silk fragments that appear to have The popularity of the Chinese silks imported from Manila via the trans-Pacific
formed part of one or more priest’s chasubles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, trade route to the Spanish colonies in the New World, located across the Atlantic
which relate closely to the woven silk lampas fragment in the Metropolitan Museum Ocean from Spain, does not seem at all in accordance with the Habsburg sumptuary
illustrated in Fig. 2.3.1.1. By the turn of the century, the motifs of woven silks made laws, too. Textual sources have shown that they could not be as strictly enforced as
to order for the Iberian market and sawn up as ecclesiastical vestments, acquired an in Spain or Portugal. Thus, the wide availability, regular supply and low sale price of
even more distinctive Chinese character. Such a mixture of two very different and Chinese woven silk cloths in comparison with those imported from Spain changed
distant cultures, one Asian and the other European, is evident in the Chinese woven the consumer habits of the Spanish colonial elites, clergy and new middle class of
silk brocade of a priest’s robe from the set of ecclesiastical vestments in the Peabody the viceroyalties capitals, Mexico City and Lima. The colonial elite’s conspicuous
Essex Museum, dating to about 1600 (Fig. 2.3.1.10). This silk brocade was made to consumption of Chinese silks and the ostentatious display of wealth and social status
order with a repeated large-scale heraldic-style design, but instead of depicting a pair in public in Mexico City and Lima, as well as the use of silks by a multi-ethnic clientele
of lions in the rampant position, a symbol commonly used in European heraldry, the of lower social stance, something completely unimaginable in the Iberian Peninsula,
silk weavers produced a strange-looking pair of standing Buddhist Lions confronting is an example of how the laws and rules of the governing Habsburg kings had
each other in front of a brocaded ball among floral scrolls that are purely Chinese in their limitations.
style. Thus, priests from the Catholic Church wore ecclesiastical vestments during the Unfortunately, as mentioned in the previous pages, the few extant ecclesiastical
celebration of the liturgy that had been cut and sawn from silks made to order even vestments dating to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that are
though they had Buddhist motifs, and therefore did not conform at all to Christian preserved in public collections around the world all have lost information on their
iconography. We still don’t know for whom the set of vestments was made. If the set was provenance. Apart from the few pieces of a set of vestments in Braga, Portugal, that
intended for use by the clergy in the Iberian Peninsula, the Catholic people attending still survive intact in the church for which they were destined (two are illustrated in
church services or festivities probably would have considered it as an exotic material Fig. 2.3.1.11a, b and c), we do not know who ordered them and for which religious
testimony of the missionary work in Asia. On the other hand, if it was intended for order or ecclesiastical community they were intended. Therefore at this point it can
use in one of the multi-cultural and multi-religious settlements of the Portuguese or not be stated with certainty if they were used in Spain, Portugal, in Asia or in the New
Spanish in Asia, such as Macao, Goa or Manila, it may have been seen by the Christian World, nor how they fitted-in with the restrictions and regulations of the sumptuary
converts and/or worshippers as an expression of the Asian and European cultural and laws in those areas. Hopefully future research will clarify this.
religious elements that coexisted in their daily lives.

114 Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer Trade in Chinese Silk 115