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Abstract
Figural motifs have received little attention in Chinese dress and textile history; typically interpreted as generic ‘figures in gardens’, they have long been overshadowed by auspicious symbols. Yet embroiderers, like other craftsmen and women in Qing dynasty China (1644–1911), sought inspiration from the vast array of narratives that circulated in print and performance. This paper explores the trend for the figural through the close study of two embroidered jackets from the Royal Ontario Museum collection featuring dramatic scenery embroidered upon ‘narrative roundels’ and ‘narrative borders’. I argue that three primary factors explain the appearance and popularity of narrative imagery in mid- to late Qing dress and textiles: the importance of theatrical performance and narratives in nineteenth-century life; the dissemination of narrative imagery in printed anthologies and popular prints; and the commercialization of embroidery. By placing the fashion for these jackets firmly within the socio-economic context of nineteenth-century China, the paper provides a novel way of understanding the phenomena of narrative figures on women’s dress through the close relationship between popular culture and fashion in nineteenth-century Chinese women’s dress.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Fan Pen Chen, Verity Wilson, Paola Zamperini, the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the curators and staff at the Royal Ontario Museum for all their help during my Veronika Gervers fellowship.
Notes
1 Yu Zhi 余治, De yi lu 得一錄 (Records of Charity Works) (1869, reprinted Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 1997), juan 11.2, vol. 8; cited in Zhao Shanlin, Zhongguo xiqu guanzhong xue (A Study of Chinese Theatre Audiences) (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe, 1990), p. 106, n. 25.
2 My DPhil dissertation forms a close study of eighteen examples of this jacket style, mainly from American collections, see Rachel Silberstein, ‘Embroidered Figures: Commerce and Culture in the Late Qing Jiangnan Fashion System’ (DPhil, University of Oxford, 2014)
3 On female audiences, see Zhao Shanlin, Zhongguo xiqu guanzhong xue, pp. 98–112. On female playwrights, see The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China, ed. by Wilt L. Idema and Beata Grant (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2004). On female audiences imitating dramatic plots, see the discussion in Silberstein, Embroidered Figures, pp. 195–228.
4 Bernard Vuilleumier, The Art of Silk Weaving in China: Symbolism of Chinese Ritual Imperial Robes (London: The China Institute, 1939), pp. 11–12.
5 Motif listings were common from the earliest catalogues onwards, for example, Helen Fernauld, Chinese Court Costumes (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1946). On the ahistorical presentation of auspicious symbols catalogues, see Clunas, ‘Human Figures in the Decoration of Ming Lacquer’, Oriental Art N.S., 32 (1986), 177–88. For a more recent and comprehensive work, see Terese Tse Bartholomew, Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2006).
6 Dorothy Ko, ‘Bondage in Time: Footbinding and Fashion Theory’, Fashion Theory, 1:1 (2003), 3–28; Antonia Finnane, Changing Clothes in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 19–29.
7 Finnane, Changing Clothes, p. 43; Rachel Silberstein, ‘Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands’ Fashion and Commercial Embroidery in Mid-Late Qing China’, Fashion Theory (2016).
8 Evelyn Rawski, ‘Economic and Social Foundations of Late Imperial Culture’, in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. by David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan and Rawski (Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 3–14.
9 Fan Jinmin and Jin Wen, Jiangnan sichou shi yanjiu (Research on Jiangnan Silk History) (Beijing: Nongye Chubanshe, 1993), pp. 361–76.
10 Wu Renshu 巫仁恕, ‘Mingdai pingmin fushi de liuxing fengshang yu shidafu de fanying’ 明代平民服飾的流行風尚與士大夫的反應 (Popular Styles of Clothing Amongst the Common People of Ming Times, and the Reaction of the Gentry), Xinshixue, 10:3 (Sept 1999), 55–109.
11 Paul S. Ropp, Dissent in Early Modern China: Ju-lin waishi and Ch’ing Social Criticism (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1981), p. 31.
12 Ropp, Dissent, p. 49.
13 On the different forms of beizi, see Zhongguo yiguan fushi dacidian, pp. 225–26.
14 On the bijia, see Zhongguo yiguan fushi dacidian, p. 228.
15 Gua, shan and ao are all long jackets reaching to the knee and were worn by Han women over skirts and trousers. Ao are usually shorter and also lined (Zhongguo yiguan fushi dacidian, p. 222).
16 On changpao and changyi, see Yin Anyi, ‘Qingdai gongting changyi tanwei’ (A Brief Investigation of the Qing Dynasty Palace Changyi Style), Gugong bowuyuan yuankan (2008.4), 149–61.
17 On distinctions and interaction between each mode of dress, see Sun Yanzhen孙彦贞, Qingdai nüxing fushi wenhua yanjiu 清代女性服饰文化研究(Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2008), pp. 37–107.
18 See Silberstein, ‘Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands’.
19 Zhao Feng, Treasures in Silk: an Illustrated History of Chinese textiles (Hangzhou: Yishatang fushi chuban, 1999), pp. 237–41.
20 I study three examples of jackets embroidered with scenes from The Romance of the Western Chamber in my thesis, Embroidered Figures, especially table 5.1. For examples of Xixiang ji in porcelain and print, see Judith Zeitlin and Yuhang Li, Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2014), pp. 24–27, 170–73.
21 Hanshang Mengren邗上蒙人, Feng yue meng 風月夢 (Preface 1848, first edition Shanghai: Shenbaoguan, 1883. Reprint. Jinan: Qi Lu Shushe, 1991), chapter 5, p. 28; translation adapted from Courtesans and Opium: Romantic Illusions of the Fool of Yangzhou, trans. by Patrick Hanan (New York: University of Columbia Press, 2009), p. 39.
22 Catherine Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), pp. 136–77.
23 Wang Shucun王樹村, Minjian zhenpin tushuo Hong lou meng 民間珍品圖說紅樓夢 (Dream of Red Chambers as Illustrated in Vernacular Art) (Taibei: Dong da tushu gongsi, 1996).
24 See Xunfei Shao’s catalogue entry on a jacket decorated with scenes from Dream of the Red Chamber in Performing Images, pp. 162–66. Qing gong xiqu wenwu 清宮戲曲文物 (Cultural Relics of Opera from the Qing Palace), ed. by Zhang Shuxian 張淑賢 (Shanghai: Shanghai kexue jishu chubanshe, 2008), nos 181–82, argues these narrative-adorned jackets were a form of theatrical costume called dapoyi 达婆衣worn by female clown roles in the Kunqu Suzhou style opera, but descriptions of this garment do not specify narrative roundels, and the quality and scale of the jackets’ embroidery is much more finely worked than most theatrical costume. Zeng Changsheng, Kunqu chuandai (Kun Opera Apparel) (Suzhou: Suzhou xiqu yanjiushi, 1963).
25 Silberstein, Embroidered Figures, pp. 1–44, also Dreams of Wind and Moon, chapter 13, p. 125.
26 Yeh, Shanghai Love, pp. 136–77.
27 This meaning is created through the pun on the sound ‘die’ which means both butterfly (die 蝶)and also a small gourd (die 瓞) that grows on vines and hence is associated with fecundity and reproduction. Significantly, ‘Guadie mianmian’ was a popular phrase with the Han Chinese rather than Manchu group, just as the style of jacket is also Han Chinese.
28 Robert D. Jacobsen, Imperial Silks: Ch’ing Dynasty Textiles in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2000), p. 480. The lack of attention to narrative can be explained by the art historical bias towards literati painting rather than vernacular imagery, something challenged by the late James Cahill’s Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), which provides a much needed scholarly account of the genre of professional or vernacular art, of which dramatic imagery was a notably major theme.
29 Zhang Qin 張琴, Lanhua bu shang de Kunqu 藍花布上的昆曲 (Indigo-printed Cloth Kunqu) (Beijing: Sheng huo, du shu, xinzhi san lian shudian, 2008); Zhang Qing 張青 and Duan Gaifang段改芳, Shanxi xiqu cixiu 山西戲曲刺繡 (Shanxi Traditional Opera Embroidery) (Ha’erbin: Heilongjiang meishu chubanshe, 1999).
30 Zeitlin and Li demonstrate how widespread performance caused theatrical motifs to flourish in a broad range of mediums, Performing Images, pp. 74–87, 123–24, 131–32, 140, 162–66, 179–80.
31 Gao Chunming, Exquisite Fabrics: Traditional Weaving and Embroidery Patterns in China (New York: Better Link Press, 2010), p. 412.
32 Finnane, Changing Clothes in China, p. 43.
33 The great Chinese dress historian Schuyler Cammann largely ignored objects of Qing women’s fashion, for example calling the mid- to late Qing cloud collar, a key fashion accessory, ‘merely a background for trivial ornamentation’ that ‘even tended to lose its traditional shape’. ‘The Symbolism of the Cloud Collar’, The Art Bulletin, 33:1 (1951), 1–9 (p. 6).
34 On this divide, see Lou Taylor, ‘Doing the Laundry? A Reassessment of Object-based Dress History’, Fashion Theory, 2:4 (1998), 337–58. There is a wide range within the curator/collector field: from the careful scholarship of objects and texts by John Vollmer or Verity Wilson, to the works of Valery Garrett, which provide sumptuously illustrated visual accounts but typically omit Chinese primary or secondary sources. Wilson, Chinese Dress (London: Bamboo Publishing in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986); Vollmer and Jacqueline Simcox, Emblems of Empire: Selections from the Mactaggart Art Collection (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2009); Garrett, Chinese Dress: from the Qing Dynasty to the Present (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2007).
35 Dorothy Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Sarah Dauncey, ‘Illusions of Grandeur: Perceptions of Status and Wealth in Late-Ming Female Clothing and Ornamentation’, East Asian History, 25/26 (2003), 43–68.
36 For exclusion, see Peter McNeil, Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2009), which, despite its assertion of crossing ‘Europe, Asia and North America’, contains very few non-European case-studies; for denial, see Chuimei Ho, ‘Textiles — the Universal Craft’, in William Watson and Chuimei Ho, The Arts of China after 1620 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 211.
37 On the history of the ao, see Gao Chunming 高春明, Zhongguo fushi mingwukao 中國服飾名物考 (A Study of Chinese Dress Objects) (Shanghai; Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2001), p. 550.
38 The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a Kangxi period (1662–1722) porcelain vase painted with this scene, (acc. no. 14.40.335); for a print example entitled ‘Fortune and Longevity in Full Measure’, see Jin Yulin 金魚林 et al., Suzhou Taohuawu muban nianhua 蘇州桃花塢木板年畫 (Suzhou Taohuawu Woodblock New Year Prints) (Nanjing; Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe; Hong Kong; Xianggang Jiabin Chubanshe, 1991), p. 67, no. 39. The Victoria and Albert Museum collection has an 1863 embroidered silk birthday hanging featuring scenes from Guo Ziyi (T.159-1964). For a Guo Ziyi embroidered shan style robe, see Wang Jinhua 王金华and Zhou Jia 周佳, Tushuo Qing dai nüzi fushi 图说清代女子服饰 (An Illustrated History of Qing Dynasty Women’s Dress) (Beijing: Zhongguo qinggongye chubanshe, 2008), p. 74.
39 Chunzaitang suibi 春在堂隨筆, cited by Wang Ning 王寧, Kunju zhezixi xu kao 昆剧折子戏叙考 (A Study of Kun Opera scene extract narratives) (Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 2011), pp. 243–45.
40 Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹, The Story of the Stone, trans. by David Hawkes, vol. 3, chap. 71, p. 409.
41 See Tanaka Issei, ‘The Social and Historical Context of Ming-Ch’ing Local Drama’, in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. by David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). The question of how far theatrical culture and performance constituted a means of contact for elite and vernacular visual cultures is a complex one and beyond the remit of this article. In particular, further work is necessary to establish how far elite and popular conventions as to scenic choice and structure were shared, and how the literate elements of theatrical culture were communicated for illiterate audiences.
42 On the development of the zhezixi custom, see Liao Ben 廖賁, ‘Zhezixi de chuxian’ 折子戲的出現 (The Appearance of Highlights from Opera), Yishu baijia, 2 (2000), 49–52.
43 The fact that both The Story of the Stone and A Cloak of Patchworked White Fur feature The Insignia-Laden Bed image perhaps points to similar publication dates; The Story of the Stone was first published around 1760, and A Cloak of Patchworked White Fur between 1770 and 1777. Qian Decang 钱得苍 (fl. 1763–1774), Gailiang quantu Zhuibaiqiu quanchuan 改良全圖綴白裘全傳 (newly edited and fully illustrated complete edition of A Cloak of Patchworked White Fur) (Baoren tang, 1781; Shanghai: Guang yashuju, 1908), collection no. 7, juan no. 2, ‘Xiejia’; collection no. 3, juan no. 2, ‘Huyuan’.
44 Zeitlin and Li, Performing Images, and Silberstein, Embroidered Figures, pp. 195–228; Catherine Pagani, ‘The Theme of Three Kingdoms in Chinese Popular Woodblock Prints’, in Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture, ed. by Kimberly Ann Besio and Constantine Tung (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), pp. 87–111, especially pp. 88–89; p. 94, n.11.
45 There are two extant versions of Manchuang hu: a thirty-six-act play found in Chuanqi bazhong 傳奇八種, also known as Shicu ji 十醋記 which was once attributed to Li Yu, but is now thought to be by Fan Xizhe 範希哲, see Li Yu quanji 李渔全集 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Guji Chubanshe, 1991), juan 6, Li Weng yueding chuanqi bazhong, shang, 笠翁閱定傳奇八種; and the twelve-act version compiled in Wang Jilie 王季烈, Jicheng qupu 集成曲譜 (A Collection of Kunqu Opera Scores) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1931), zhenji, juan 8. References are to the Jicheng qupu version.
46 Wang Ning, Kunju zhezixi xukao, p. 243.
47 Jenna Wu argues this largely sympathetic portrayal should be placed in the context of a more tolerant perception of female jealousy that begins in the seventeenth century; see The Chinese Virago: a Literary Theme (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 9.
48 ‘Guimen’, p. 6.
49 Stitches mentioned in the object labels are defined in the glossary. For fuller definitions and diagrams of Qing dynasty embroidery stitches, see Silberstein, Embroidered Figures, table 4.3. On the rug as a device to delineate and represent theatrical space, see Zeitlin, ‘Introduction’, in Performing Images, p. 17.
50 Zhang Lizhen 張麗真, ‘Tan Manchuang hu de yipian wenzhang: Kunju yanyuan de zisheng yu fansi’ 談滿床笏的一篇文章: 昆劇演員的自省與反思 (An Essay Discussing Manchuang hu: The Self-Examination and Rethinking of Kunqu Performers), reprinted online:
<http://www.douban.com/group/topic/19737889/> [accessed 15 September 2012].
51 Barbara Hernstein-Smith, ‘Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories’, Critical Inquiry, 7:1 On Narrative (Autumn 1980), 213–36 (p. 221).
52 Craig Clunas, ‘Books and Things: Ming Literary Culture and Material Culture’, Chinese Studies (London: British Library Occasional Paper 10, 1998), 136–42 (p. 138).
53 There is a rich tradition of snake or demon love stories in Chinese literature, but the best known, earliest rendition of this tale is found in a short story written by Feng Menglong in 1624, entitled ‘Madam White is Imprisoned For Ever under the Thunder Peak Pagoda’ and published in his Stories to Caution the World (Jing shi tong yan 警世通言).
54 I discuss the relationship between these stylized West Lake scene roundels and the trend for depicting landscape scenery in women’s dress in ‘Eight Scenes of Suzhou: Landscape Embroidery, Urban Courtesans, and Nineteenth-Century Fashion’ (Late Imperial China, June 2015), 1–52.
55 Chen Weiyu 陳為瑀, Kunju zhezixi chutan 崑劇折子戲初探 (An initial study of Kun theatre zhezixi scenes) (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1991), pp. 261–64. On the evolution of the White Snake tale, see Wilt Idema, The White Snake and her Son: A Translation of the Precious Scroll of Thunder Peak with Related Texts (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2009).
56 Dorothy Ko, ‘Between the Boudoir and the Global Market: Shen Shou and Suzhou Embroidery at the Turn of the 20th Century’, in Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from Treaty Ports to World War II, ed. by Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarn Thomsen (Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago: Co-published and distributed by Art Media Resources, 2009), p. 43. pp. 38-61.
57 G. Tradescant Lay (George Tradescant), The Chinese as they are: their moral, social, and literary character: a new analysis of the language: with succinct views of their principal arts and sciences (London: W. Ball, 1841), p. 275.
58 A third example of a jacket featuring The Tale of the White Snake borders is found on the Dream of the Red Chamber roundel jacket featured in the Performing Images exhibition (pp. 162–66). Though with substantial overlap, these borders have been produced from a different pattern, demonstrating how commercial patterns circulated in the marketplace. Yunfei Shao argues that the border format is used as a topographical space that presents the White Snake descending from Mount Emei (embroidered on the neckline) to the water (embroidered on the bottom hem). This same narrative organization is used on the MFA jacket, though not the ROM jacket which lacks the overlapping jacket border.
59 Suxiu 蘇繡 from Suzhou; Yuexiu 粵繡 from Guangdong; Shuxue 蜀繡 from Sichuan; Xiangxiu 湘繡 from Hunan. See Sun Peilan 孫佩蘭, Zhongguo cixiu shi 中國刺繡史 (The History of Chinese Embroidery) (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2007), pp. 83–105. For a map detailing these four locations, see <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qing_Dynasty_1820.png>
60 For an outline of some of the main differences between shangpinxiu and pictorial or artistic embroidery (huaxiu 画绣), see Sun Peilan, Zhongguo cixiu shi, p. 879.
61 Also note that the white snake has been filled in with green colour — a mistake perhaps reflecting the way the narrative could be altered as it passed through the hands of pattern-drafters, embroiderers and tailors.
62 Qian Decang, A Cloak of Patchworked White Fur, ji 7, juan 2.
63 For an example of the ‘Water Battle’ scene in a vernacular popular print, see the ‘cartoon serial-style’ version of the White Snake story produced by the Sun Wenya print-shop, reproduced in Qing mo nianhua hui cui: Shanghai tushuguan cang jing xuan 清末年畫匯粹:上海圖書館藏精選 (Treasures of late Qing Popular Prints: A Selection from the Collection of Shanghai Library) (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 2000), nos 74–75.
64 John Vollmer has argued the Qing re-visioning of the Imperial dragon robe formed a deliberate communication of imperial symbolism, the emperor positioned centrally within the cosmos. See Silks for Thrones and Alters: Chinese Costumes and Textiles (Myrna Myers, 2003).
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Rachel Silberstein
Rachel Silberstein completed a DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2014, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the department of History of Art and Visual Culture at Rhode Island School of Design. Her dissertation examined the relationship between fashion and popular culture in nineteenth-century Chinese women’s dress, and included an extensive study of the presentation of dramatic scenery in the narrative roundel jacket style. This paper is based on research carried out at the Royal Ontario Museum as the 2012 Veronika Gervers Research Fellow in Textile History.