Canton antique Chinese painted silk mounted (96 x 74cm)

SOLD

96 x 74 cm  //  3ft 2" x 2ft 5"

Luxury 'Chinese export' painted satin silk, hand-sewn mounted onto a board. Yellow selvedges with areas of wear and staining - likely to once have been fashioned into ladies' dresses. The relation to porcelain decorated wares is striking but unsurprising. These texiles use semi precious materials for pigments, including Malacite, Azurite and Turquoise.

At the very least the Chinese silk trade goes back 2500 years. Silk was probably China's most important single export commodity, only being overtaken by tea in the 19th C. The importance of the trade in silk cannot be over-stressed; its techniques were jealously guarded and its domestic sale was as critical as its export. As the largest single trade commodity from basic to luxury, textiles lead to a range of social expression often set in rigid formal terms in pre-revolutionary China.

The British and Dutch, following the Portuguese, established 'Hongs' and trading houses in Canton etc. to take advantage of the sea trade with China, which of course included silk trading, thus avoiding the more unreliable silk road. With the East India Company, eventually Britain became the dominant foreign power taking most of the cake roughly by the early 19th C with the relationship being more and more dictated by Britain. Other Europeans/Americans focusing on trade forced Chinese Imperial influence to wane.

Provenance Powerham Castle Devon

• circa 1760

Ref. 15668*