15th c cloud collar made in the Persian royal workshops as a diplomatic gift to the Russian Tsar. From Tsars and the East
It's beautiful, right? So what is it?
I'm just going to quote Schuyler Camman, who was a Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania before his death in 1991. He was an anthropologist and art historian and he did some ground-breaking work on Chinese symbolism including magic squares and the meaning of cloud collars. I'm planning to tell you more about the symbolism of cloud collars in his amazing article in another post.
Anyway, Camman says,
"Yun Chien or "cloud collar", is the later Chinese name for a four-lobed (more rarely eight-lobed) pattern of considerable antiquity. The name apparently arose during the Middle Ages, when the pattern was adapted to form an actual collar for decorating the upper part of robes...This pattern was also painted around the necks of vases and jars in later Chinese ceramics; but we shall see that it had numerous other uses in China and elsewhere, for it was widely distributed across Asia."
And let me tell you, once you see the motif, it is everywhere in Central Asian art.
And let me tell you, once you see the motif, it is everywhere in Central Asian art.
14th-15th c wood carving from Dagestan, a federal subject of Russia in the northern Caucasus Mountains by the Caspian Sea. Ashmolean Museum
A silk cloud collar, Yuan Dynasty, China 1279-1368
Timurid Dynasty miniature painting, Persia (1370-1507)
Only, the first time I saw a photo of it I thought...well, that's odd. The color scheme seems pretty muted for a Persian diplomatic gift. Typically, they were all about contrasting colors to highlight the beautiful materials and workmanship and the expensive dyes and metal thread and jewels. This collar is a pretty muted green silk with embroidered and couched figures in gold with a few pops of color. It still bothered me but the first two books I saw it in had no information other than the date, place of origin and diplomatic purpose.
Detail of 15th c cloud collar made in the Persian royal workshops as a diplomatic gift to the Russian Tsar. From Tsars and the East
The third book I found it in was The Tsars and the East and it revealed that for a very long time, the collar was thought to be all original. And then it bothered somebody enough that they took a closer look and discovered that the original ground fabric was a brilliant crimson silk satin/taffeta, listed in the royal inventories as 'serge'. The gold embroidered figures where original. At some point since the piece entered Russia the silk began to disintegrate.
So sometime in the 17th c somebody was tasked with fixing it and chose to add a cotton backing for stability and then used green embroidery to completely cover the shattered crimson silk. So it worked, technically. The embroidery was saved and the object continues to exist instead of being completely destroyed. But, the choice of a lower contrast replacement for the crimson silk is pretty clearly a choice made by someone who did not share the same aesthetics and design sensibility as the Persian royal workshop that originally produced it. (There were also some attempts to repair damage to the embroidery, but the use of silver gilt thread instead of the original gold makes the repairs pretty evident.)
So sometime in the 17th c somebody was tasked with fixing it and chose to add a cotton backing for stability and then used green embroidery to completely cover the shattered crimson silk. So it worked, technically. The embroidery was saved and the object continues to exist instead of being completely destroyed. But, the choice of a lower contrast replacement for the crimson silk is pretty clearly a choice made by someone who did not share the same aesthetics and design sensibility as the Persian royal workshop that originally produced it. (There were also some attempts to repair damage to the embroidery, but the use of silver gilt thread instead of the original gold makes the repairs pretty evident.)
Detail of 15th c cloud collar made in the Persian royal workshops as a diplomatic gift to the Russian Tsar. From Tsars and the East
Detail of 15th c cloud collar made in the Persian royal workshops as a diplomatic gift to the Russian Tsar. From Tsars and the East
And that is why I chose the word 'Conjecture' as part of my website title. Because really, all we can do at the end of the day is examine the resources we currently have and draw conclusions from them, knowing that we will likely find more information that changes things again. And sometimes we just find an old tin can...
