CHINA BEIJING
Late 19th century
The taste for the exotic of some Western buyers could certainly be fully satisfied by this carpet, where an original design, built on the theme of the vase and inspired by the traditional theme, is superimposed on the color scheme and medallion design dear to the Chinese tradition. decoration called bogu or "of the hundred antiquities". Vases with flower arrangements have been a theme dear to Chinese art for centuries and there is no limit to the shape of the vases and the essential harmony of floral compositions. This fact is confirmed by the carpet illustrated here, where in the field around twenty vases are depicted with meticulous attention, different in shape, now oval, now basket or amphora, as well as for the decoration, which is rendered with few approximations (on those closer to the medallion there are stylized dragon figures). Inside the vases, peach and plum branches, peonies and daffodils, calla lilies and lilies, but also twisted shapes, more similar to mushrooms or perhaps to the magical lingzhi, the plant of immortality. It is worth remembering that in Chinese iconography the mushroom inside a vase on a table is a drawing with a composite symbolic value, which wishes salvation and safety.