#20853
Main Hall Carpet
11’9” x 12’
Mid 18th Century
Structural Analysis:
Warp:cotton,off-white,natural,Z-4-S,somewhat irregular;
Weft:cotton,off-white,Z-4-S,winder plied, quite irregular;2 shots alternating; wefts thick and soft;
Pile:wool,Z-4;
Knot: PL/0 degrees warp depression/horiz. 6 x vertical 5 = 30 knots per square inch; knots somewhat irregular, some quite thin; [check for T knots along edges]
Sides: two cords each of two body warps, inner directly weft-attached; figure eight sparsely weft yarn wrapped;
Weft/knot ratio: 60/40 wefts predominant.
Remarks:
This is another variant on the popular Mandarin nine lion dog carpet. The polychrome cloud wreath has exuberant, almost Baroque volutes at the four cardinal points. The intermediary wreath sections were in field tones and have faded, making the composition rather hard to discern: the wreath would have been more salient before the changes to the long, curved, intermediate sections.
The dominant, dark blue lion dog appears at the top of the medallion and has a wide, particularly expressive face, complete with character creases and a canine snout. The dog has real personality and individuality, unlike most of the animals in similar carpets. The main dog is alert and lively, with curved and slightly droopy ears. All the dogs have light colored forepaws and small over pelts. The creatures are well spaced and not crowded in the medallion. The protected (protégé) dog is particularly small. The main dog seems to have no parallels among published carpets and were any to appear, an attribution to the same workshop should be considered.
The corners of the field employ double peony arabesques forming simplified “heart” points at the right angles. The development here is much more schematic than l8830 and need not indicate the same workshop of origin. Sprays of tree peonies, butterflies, leafy twigs, fractional tendrils and grassy clusters are spotted throughout the now buff field.
The dark blue peony main border is notable for the rare diagonal corner palmettes from which emanate foliate sprays in both directions in order to make a perfectly symmetric turn. A bold T-fret inner border in salmon and dark blue has neat T’s in three corners and a single hook in one. This is a certain indicator, if one is still needed, that no scale paper cartoons were available to the weavers. Specifically, there was no formal illustration of how to make a fret border turn a corner.
As with our other examples, this nine dog main hall carpet was probably woven to the order of a successful Mandarin administrator. Each of our large lion dog carpets seem to originate in a different shop, although 20853 and l8355 may be more clearly related than the others. The extreme technical uniformity across the entire local industry deprives us of any unique idiosyncrasies and hence pattern is the sole evidence for differentiation. One must also keep in mind that the same shop evolved over time, producing different carpets for different clients, changing the design pool when useful and implying a rotating work staff.
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