|
Patches on ancient official robes
 |
| A quail-patterned patch for the ninth-rank
civil officials | Patches for the military officers of
the Ming Dynasty were simpler. For the first- and second-rank military officers,
patches with the pattern of a lion were used, while those with tiger
and leopard
patterns were for the third and fourth ranked officers respectively. The
bear-patterned ones were for the fifth-rank officers, and those of young-tiger
patterns for the sixth- and seventh-rank officers. Rhinoceros-patterned patches
signaled eighth-rank officers, and hippocampus-patterned ones the ninth-rank
officers.
The custom of attaching patches continued in the Qing Dynasty, but with a
little difference in form and color from the previous dynasty. For example,
while patches of the Ming Dynasty were in a whole piece on both the front and
back of an official robe, the front patches of the Qing Dynasty were halved in
the middle of the robe's front part. More over, while the former's patches were
mostly light colored, with design patterns woven from golden thread against a
red background, the latter's were richly colored, with the background color
being either black or dark red. Also, whereas there were no floral borders
around the edges of the
 |
| A hippocampus-patterned patch for the
first-rank civil officials | former's patches, those of
the latter were always bordered with decorative patterns.
In addition, while in the Ming Dynasty, rank patches for
some civil officials (such as the fourth-, fifth-, seventh-, eighth- and
ninth-rank officials) were embroidered with a pair of birds, those of the Qing
Dynasty had just a single bird. Another characteristic of the Qing Dynasty that
were different from the Ming Dynasty lied in the fact that patches were also
attached to the robes of the women with a rank title conferred by the emperor
(usually the wife or mother of a senior official), the design patterns of which
depended on the son's or husband's official rank. But for the mother or wife of
a military officer, the bird-patterned patches were used, rather than the
beast-patterned ones.
|
|
E-Mail
This Article 
Print
Friendly Format 
