Golden Geese and Silver Stags: Liao and Jin Hunting Robes

• In Event: Fashioning Status: Making Meaning through Dress and Adornment across Asia

Abstract

Golden Geese and Silver Stags: Liao and Jin Hunting Robes
Political and ethnic status in the courts of the Liao (c. 906-1125) and Jin (c. 1115-1234) were marked in large part by dress. As neighbors to the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, respectively, both the Liao and Jin were acutely aware of the importance of constructing an identity that would demonstrate political and cultural parity with their southern neighbors. This is nowhere seen more clearly than in official dress. Hunting dress (tianliefu 田獵服) was one of the most important styles of dress worn at the Liao and Jin courts. Woven of silk with patterns of animals and floral motifs made using gold and silver threads, these hunting robes signaled new levels of courtly luxury that began to be applied to a traditional form of steppe dress, historically regarded by the Chinese as “barbarian”. The metallic woven textiles of the Liao and Jin are approached together here due to the overlap in techniques and patterns produced under both dynasties. Such textiles had a lasting legacy: both the production of gold-woven silk textiles and the adaptation of the practical nomadic hunting and riding garb to a courtly setting would pave the way for robing practices in the Mongol Yuan dynasty (c.1260-1368). Through an analysis of extant examples of partial and complete hunting robes, and pictorial examples found in tombs and commissioned by the court, this paper aims to examine and define the form, function, and significance of these robes.

Author

• Eiren Shea, University of Pennsylvania