Chair Strip with Flowers and Decorative Rocks

Chair Strip with Flowers and Decorative Rocks

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The length of this chair strip is divided into segments, with a different floral design for each part of the chair being covered-the front legs, seat, and back, and a short segment that hangs behind the chair. Tree peonies dominate the floral designs, and some segments are actually miniature garden scenes, with decorative, perforated garden rocks and butterflies. In the term for the textile's structure ("cut and voided velvet"), "cut" refers to the fact that, as in most velvets we use today, the pile loops have been cut; "voided" refers to areas without pile, where the pile warps were not raised onto velvet rods at all but were instead allowed to remain concealed in the background. In this piece, the pattern appears in cut pile, and the background and details of the pattern, such as the veins of leaves, are voided.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chair Strip with Flowers and Decorative RocksChair Strip with Flowers and Decorative RocksChair Strip with Flowers and Decorative RocksChair Strip with Flowers and Decorative RocksChair Strip with Flowers and Decorative Rocks

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.