Minneapolis Institute of Art

Panel

France

Date

18th century

Medium

Silk, metallic threads, complex weave with discontinuous supplementary weft patterning

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The design of plumed crowns in trees with tents and pagodas below exemplifies the chinoiserie style, the enthusiasm for Chinese ornamental motifs that pervaded all European decorative arts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After direct trade had been established between Europe and China in 1554, the East India trading companies imported Chinese lacquers and porcelains, which inspired French textile designers. French silk weavers, principally in Lyon, produced delicately patterned fabrics such as this panel which could have been used in clothing or as a wall furnishing. Such elaborate silk fabrics were very costly to produce. It would have taken at least two highly skilled weavers, using the most sophisticated weaving technology of the period, several days to produce one yard of fabric. France

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