Brocade with Hares (1200s–mid-1300s): Art, History and Details

Brocade with Hares (1200s–mid-1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The motif of the hare among bushes may relate to the hunting activities of the Khitan, the Jurchen, and the Mongols. Hare hunts are recorded in the Liaoshi (History of the Liao Dynasty) and were often reported by envoys returning to China from the northern states. The asymmetry of the image in this textile is characteristic of Jin brocades. However, the paired (instead of single) warps reveal the influence of craftsmen from the eastern Iranian world and therefore dates the textile to the Mongol period.

Object facts

• Title: Brocade with Hares
• Date: 1200s–mid-1300s
• Culture: Northern China, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk: tabby, brocaded; gold thread
• Dimensions: Overall: 26 x 42.8 cm (10 1/4 x 16 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1991.113

Collection credit

Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Lisbet Holmes

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
• Watt, James C. Y., Anne E. Wardwell, and Morris Rossabi. When silk was gold: Central Asian and Chinese textiles. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1997.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.