The “Textile with Elephants, Crowned Double-Headed Eagles, and Flowers ” is dated back to the “second half of the 16th century.” This exquisitely patterned “silk damask” was woven by the Chinese and sold in the Iberian market. The Portuguese who were the first voyagers to set up European ports in Asia through the Indian Ocean Basin, could operate only at the port of Macau. Though foreign trade opened China to new forms of wealth, successors of the Ming empire forbade foreign interaction in China and ended maritime trade so that China could revert back to traditional standards of living which involved strictly following Confucian values. However, thousands of Chinese merchants managed to trade with, for example, Spanish forces in Manila, as well as the Dutch VOC at their “colonial capital of Batavia.” Consequently, Chinese merchants were of the lowest class according to Confucian “social hierarchy” because moralists saw them as avaricious and “unscrupulous social parasites.” Still, China developed elegant silks also among other decorative, traditional fabrics to the point where Europeans copied Chinese techniques and thus made artificial products to sell within the European markets. This silk damask is darkly colored in blue and gold where the consistent pattern of floral, double-headed eagles, and short-eared elephants give it a sense of genius and power, but Europeans would find it harder to understand the deeper meaning behind this textiles and so could only admire the piece aesthetically.

Ramanpreet Chand