WORKED BY MEN

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20921, 28 September 1939, Page 4

WORKED BY MEN

CHINESE IMPERIAL ROBES Not the least interesting part of the exhibition of Chinese ‘lmperial Robes at the China Institute in Gordon Square, London, are those provided for the empresses, states an English exchange. These were not allowed to be made by women, but were woven and embroidered entirely by men. In some ways, because fewer symbols had to be included in them, they are more of a dress and less of an epitome of history than those of the emperors. While the Emperor’s ceremonial robes had to include the five-clawed dragon, earth, sea, sky, cranes, clouds, and mountains, those of the empresses were covered chiefly with flowery designs. Actually there is much symbolism, both in the texture and colour and also in the design. An eighteenth-century Robe of Honour exhibited is jade green with orchids, butterflies, mountains, waves, and furrows. A ritual robe of the same period shows cranes holding peaches of longevity. Other women’s robes are of jade green silk, perhaps, with the sacred mountain and with medallions of flowers and butterflies, of flowers, bats, and butterflies on plum-colour-ed silk. A tunic belonging to an eighteenth-century empress has golden butterflies on a plum-coloured background. Very charming is the two-fold symbol of marriage, dotted about on one of the rooes. The background of swastikas indicates infinite prosperity. The bat represents happiness, the peony prosperity, and so forth. There is a peaceful, happy feeling about all the symbols on both kinds of rob, as though the Chinese were civilised enough to have time for all the intricacies of ritual.