child's long pao (dragon robe)

child's long pao (dragon robe) , late 1700s or early 1800s, Qing dynasty (1644–1911)

Where object was made: China

Material/technique: silver threads; possibly ink; gold thread; embroidering; possibly paint; silk

Credit line: Gift in memory of James H. Walker Jr., by his family

Accession number: 1993.0351

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Exhibition Label:
“Flowers, Dragons and Pine Trees: Asian Textiles in the Spencer Museum of Art,” Nov-2005, Mary Dusenbury
This small boy’s dragon robe, woven with meticulous attention to detail, is embedded with his family’s blessings: the five auspicious colors, pearls, rolls of tribute silk, a pair of wish-granting jewels, golden ornaments, lotus and bats (good fortune).
Later in its history, this long pao appears to have been used by another small child. The garment is soiled and watermarked, the lining is frayed, and heavily damaged areas have been roughly darned, suggesting a second life for this robe in the dress-up chest of a Western home.

Archive Label 2003:
This small boy’s semi-formal court robe, the oldest in the collection, is a miniature of an adult male robe. It has slits at center front and back and a complex iconographical schema in which individual motifs work together to present a diagram of a cosmos ordered by a just, benevolent and powerful emperor. As in the two adult long pao in this case, the diagonal lines at the hem, lishui, represent the deep ocean that was thought to surround the earth. Above them, auspicious symbols appear half-hidden in the troughs of the waves and thrown up on the shore, evidence of the abundance of the sea and prosperity of the realm. At the center of the front hem the waves crash against a stylized series of peaks representing the earth-mountain, the axis mundi or axis of world, a cosmic mountain also equated with the Buddhist Mount Meru and the Chinese sacred Kunlun mountains. Above the mountains dragons desport themselves with their flaming jewels in a heaven filled with clouds and auspicious symbols.
The focus of the elaborate imagery is the rampant dragon at center front and back, curled around a flaming orb. The dragon, the Qing imperial symbol, was an ancient male symbol associated with clouds, rain, thunder and lightning. The flaming orb also is associated with thunder and lightning, reflecting and augmenting the awesome power of the dragon. Some or all of this cosmic landscape is usually, as here, repeated in miniature on borders and cuffs.