IMAGE DETAILS

Two Imperial Dragons, Ming Dynasty throne platform carpet from the Forbidden City, Beijing. Wanli period, late 16th or early 17th century. Wool (possibly goat hair) on a silk and cotton foundation, 5.37 x 4.90m (17'7" x 16'1"). Sotheby's Hong Kong, 7th October 2006. Estimate refer department.

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23 August 2006

Sotheby's in Hong Kong will offer a Wanli period (1573-1619) Imperial throne platform carpet, originally from the Forbidden City in Beijing, in their 'Classicism in Continuum – The Arts of the Ming' sale on 7 October 2006.

Knotted in wool (or possibly goat hair) on heavy silk warps with cotton wefts, this large, almost square, carpet, measuring some five metres on each side, depicts two five-clawed imperial dragons confronting a flaming pearl against a background of clouds. The body of the dragon on the left, protecting the West, is in dark blue decorated with a diamond lattice in mid-blue indicating its scales. The body of the dragon on the right, protecting  the East, is in yellow decorated with a light red diamond trellis.

The field is enclosed by a 'key' border in dark blue against a reddish gold ground. The border is flanked in turn by three narrow stripes in green yellow and black, which are the signature of the carpets from the Wanli Imperial workshops and can be seen on all known examples. The outer wide undecorated band in the same colour as the field is a feature that can also be seen on all examples of this type.

Sixty-five Wanli Imperial carpets are known to have been made in the last quarter of the 16th century for the Forbidden City: 44 of them are still in the Palace Museum, Beijing, and 21 are in private collections worldwide, seven of them have passed through the international auction market since the early 1960s. Most surviving examples are torn, cut, missing large sections or simply fragments. Their exact place of manufacture has not yet been identified. They are sufficiently different in their colours, weave and details to the later carpets known to have come from Ningxia in northwestern China to make it unlikely that they were also made there; their huge size and the fact that they were made to fit around columns and platforms suggests that they were made in Beijing in a specific workshop set up to weave for the Palace.

In the early part of the 20th century, after the Boxer revolt in 1901, some of the square format carpets made to fit throne platforms in the Imperial Palace were sold to wealthy Americans, among them the throne carpet from the Hall of Supreme Harmony to the banker J.P. Morgan (Glanz der Himmerssöhne, Kaiserliche Teppiche aus China, 1400-1750, Cologne 2005, no.4). The present carpet is reportedly from the collection of a Chinese family who purchased it in Beijing before the First World War. Sometime during the 1920s it was divided down the middle between two members of the family, but the pieces were expertly rejoined in the 1960s, when it passed into a Western collection. Apart from the re-join the carpet has no other restorations and is in full original pile.

For an estimate and further information, readers should contact Sotheby's Hong Kong.