“Length of Woven Silk” is a Chinese textile based on European silk designs called “bizarre”. This textile was designed in China around the time 1710-20 with silk satin, brocaded, gilt and silver paper wrapped thread brocading. It contains a “sophisticated melange of lush flora and fantastic architectural features” which is from European silks around the time 1695 to 1720. This was unique silk because most of Chinese exports silks are woven on wider looms, however, this one does not include that. Many people predict that this silk was made to circumvent the English and French because they banned importing Asian silks around the eighteenth century. So including the styles of an European silks are to distract the trade route for Chinese to be able to export their silks.

David Kim