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- Title
Peripheral Matters: Selvage/Chef-de-piece Inscriptions on Chinese Silk Textiles.
- Authors
Schäfer, Dagmar
- Abstract
Throughout Chinese history, dynastic states time and again inscribed the artifact with product-related information, such as the maker's, commissioner's, or owner's names, or the date and site of production. Functional inscriptions were authorized with reference to one and the same quote in a traditional canon on rites situated within a moral discourse on production and consumption. In practice, content and formats, however, changed substantially. In a previous article I argued that reign marks, mostly known from porcelain, must be understood as a peculiar derivative of such functional inscriptions, and that they reflect a growing concern of the Ming state to lay claim on artifacts and propagate imperial rights. Merchants and craftsmen across trades drew on imperial marks among others to invoke trust in their markings which served advertising purposes. This Article highlights inscriptions as a conceptual framework to analyze the complex influences that affected marking practices on silk textiles. Information on silk was first stamped, or written on the silk, then woven into the selvage or chef-de-piece and later on embroidered. Personal names were replaced by institutional affiliations. Shifts in techniques reveal changing modes of trust, while alterations in content and interpretation resulted from institutional reorganization and the varying roles of silks in everyday life and as a ritual item, tributary ware, and commodity.
- Subjects
MARKS (Medieval land tenure); ATTITUDES toward entitlement; TEXTILE industry; SILK; INSCRIPTIONS; PERSONAL names
- Publication
U.C. Davis Law Review, 2013, Vol 47, Issue 2, p705
- ISSN
0197-4564
- Publication type
Article