Silks from Imperial China: Ming and Qing dynasty costumes and textiles 1368-1911

Jacqueline Simcox gave a wonderful talk on Silks from Imperial China: Ming and Qing dynasty costumes and textiles 1368-1911 at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Monday. The event was jointly organised with our Chinese Congregations and was greatly appreciated by those who came.

Jacqueline spoke about some of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) textiles and some of the imperial costumes and festivals and showed how they changed when the Machu from the north took over the country from 1644-1911 (Qing dynasty).

We received lots of appreciative comments about the amount that people had learnt and also the opportunity to see actual silks. People were fascinated about how the embroidery work was done. The quality of the professional embroidery work is stunning. Those from our Chinese congregations also appreciated the stories linked to designs that Jacqueline shared, with several commenting that she had reminded them of stories they had been told but had forgotten. 

Jacqueline Simcox has written numerous articles on Chinese textiles, catalogued private collections and contributed essays to museum exhibition catalogues, such as ‘Celestial Silks’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, in 2004. More recently she has co-authored, with John Vollmer, a book on the imperial Chinese textiles in the Mactaggart Art Collection, University of Alberta, in Canada. ‘Emblems of Empire’was published in 2010.

The talk was sponsored by Bonhams Chinese Department.

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Beijing Central Music Academy - Music of the Zhihua Temple.