CIRCA: 1875 – 1900
An unusual carpet with a dragon and phoenix design from an undetermined region of China*, with a curious border design. That is, while the simple ‘T’ border is commonly used, it is encased either side by a sinuous ‘wavey’ border of a kind rarely encountered. The main field itself has been left uncluttered save for several clouds of various shapes, the ones at the dragon’s end being of a particularly odd shape. In Chinese mythology the dragon represent power, strength and good fortune and is associated with imperial power – Chinese emperors considered themselves descendants of dragons – while the Chinese phoenix is a mythical bird symbolizing harmony, virtue, peace, and prosperity and is said to represent the empress. The size is 150cm x 72cm, it has cotton warp and weft and was made sometime in the late 1800’s. It has been in the one collectors hands for over fifty years and while the pile is low throughout, it has no repairs or reweaves.
*Neither the colour nor the knotting point to one particular weaving area. The overall colour is not often seen in Chinese carpets while the knotting is moderately depressed, leaving the back of the carpet noticeably ‘ribbed’ so to speak, suggestive of carpets woven in the Xinjiang / East Turkestan region of western China, but the dragon / phoenix combination is not a design associated with carpets from that area. We have placed it in the Inner Mongolian section of our website, but we think it may well have come from the Gansu region, or even been made in Xinjiang as a ‘special order’. Alternately by a weaver from Xinjiang residing elsewhere in China but still using the ‘depressed knot’ weaving style. We have only ever handled (or seen) one other similar to it, which can be seen at the bottom of the page here https://warpandweft.club/ones-that-got-away-catch-and-release/