Cleveland Museum of Art

Dragons Chasing Flaming Pearls

Date

1200s or earlier

Medium

silk and gold thread: tapestry

Culture

Central China

Department

Textiles

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This rectangular, reversible tapestry ( kesi ) fragment, woven with silk and metal thread on a deep purple ground, is a section from yardage likely intended for a garment, but no contemporary paintings exist to confirm this. A selvage edge remains on the left; having an extant selvage edge provides us with information about the loom on which this textile was woven. The design motif of this kesi—dragons chasing flaming pearls—is Chinese. But the form of the dragons and the way they are crowded together is not Chinese. Rather than animals and birds among flowers, a frequently occurring pattern in the decorative art of eastern Central Asia that long predated the Mongol conquest, here the dragons are chasing flaming pearls. This deviation is indicative of the powerful influence of the Mongols. The metal thread used in this weaving is fabricated from very thin strips of parchment with applied gold and silver leaf that are then wound around a core of yellow silk.

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