Imperial Palace Carpets

The Forbidden City was the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties. This city built in 1420, now a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage, has an area of ​​720 square kilometers and presents the luxurious lifestyle of the emperors and the imperial court.

These specimens have a silk fleece and a structure made up of silver-plated copper threads that are intertwined with the cotton forming the weft reminiscent of the “Sumak” process. The carpets, attributable to the nineteenth century, reveal an inscription in the upper part that places them in some imperial palaces of the forbidden city, called: “Palace of supreme harmony”, “Palace of perfect harmony”, “Palace of preserved harmony”, “Palace of literary splendor”, “Palace of military valor”, “Palace of Heavenly Purity”, “Palace of the great union”, “Palace of earthly tranquility”, “Palace of the spirit” and “Palace of the cult of the ancestors”.

The recurring symbology in these specimens, probably Peking, is generally Buddhist, Taoist or depicting landscapes and rarely geometric motifs.