UNIQUE Chinese Scholar's Jacket 1800s-1912 OUTSTANDI (05/23/2011)...

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UNIQUE Chinese Scholar's Jacket 1800s-1912 OUTSTANDING

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UNIQUE Chinese Scholar's Jacket 1800s-1912 OUTSTANDING

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Sold Date: 05/23/2011
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Ethnic, Folk & Native American Art

UNIQUE Chinese Scholar's Jacket 1800s-1912 OUTSTANDING
RARE Silk Brocade Chinese Scholar's Jacket - Outstanding
This magnificent jacket was cobbled together from magnificent fragments of antique hand loomed Chinese silk brocade made specifically for a Chinese Scholar Bureaucrat who passed his imperial examinations ( see below ) in the 1800s-1912. This is the very same silk brocade highly coveted for millennia by merchants, pilgrims, princes, and popes from "The Silk Road" that linked China and the Roman Empire.
Much of the jacket's exterior is composed of original antique brocade -- with additions made to replace the collar and extend the sleeves, and trim the bottom of the jacket. The hand cast metal (brass/ bronze?), and the monochromatic indigo silk brocade lining also appear to be original.
The ancient, intricate imperial dragon and other brocade imagery are stunning, the colors throughout this unusual garment remain vivid.
Overall, the silk brocade is near perfect, with a very few, very minor breaks in the silk that are hard to find. In all this is a magnificent jacket certain to delight its new owner.This jacket was brought back from China by Ida Pruitt ( see below ) in either 1959, or 1972 and given to her friend and scholar, Dr. Helene S Zahler (also see below ) -- who tucked away safely (in its net bag) in a drawer -- where it remained until recently.
Further, this item comes from a smoke-free home, and is clean and odor free.
background on the Imperial Chinese examinations
The Imperial examination was an examination system in Imprerial China designed to select the best administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy: civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, China's last imperial dynasty.
In the main hall of the imperial palace during the Tang and Song Dynasties there stood two stone statues. One was of a dragon and the other of Ao ( 鳌 ), the mythical turtle whose chopped-off legs serve as pillars for the sky in Chinese legend. The statues were erected on stone plinths in the center of a flight of stairs where successful candidates (jinshi) in the palace examination lined up to await the reading of their rankings from a scroll known as the jinbang ( 金榜 ). The first ranked scholar received the title of Zhuàngyuán ( 狀元 /状元 ), and the honor of standing in front of the statue of Ao. This gave rise to the use of the phrases "to have stood at Ao's head" ( 占鳌头 [Zhàn ào tóu]), or "to have stood alone at Ao's head" ( 独占鳌头 [Dú zhàn ào tóu]) to describe a Zhuàngyuán.
background on Ida Pruitt
"Ida Pruitt (1888 – 1985), bi-cultural social worker, author, speaker, interpreter and 20th century contributor to Sino-American understanding. She was the daughter of North China Southern Baptist missionaries Anna Seward Pruitt and C.W. Pruitt. Born in 1891 in the coastal town of Penglai on the Shandong peninsula, her childhood was spent in the small inland village of Sung-ch’iat’an, where for many years the Pruitts were the only Western family.
"After attending Cox College in College Park, GA (1906–1909), Ida Pruitt received a B.S. from Columbia University Teachers College in NY in (1910). Ida returned to China to be with her family and became a teacher and principal of Wai Ling School for Girls in Chefoo (1912–1918). In 1918, she came back to the United States and studied social work in Boston and Philadelphia until hired by the Rockefeller Foundation in NY as head of the Department of Social Services at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) where she remained until 1938. Ida was one of the few Westerners that remained influential in Chinese Aid and Development throughout much of the twentieth century.
"Like her mother, "Ida Pruitt was also a prolific writer and the author of a number of books, stories, and articles, including several autobiographies: A China Childhood (1978), The Years Between , and Days in Old Peking: May 1921-October 1938 as well as several biogra...