Daily Wear in Late Qing Dynasty and Early Republic Period

Prof. Bao Mingxin’s research at the ROM was focused on items of clothing from China’s late Qing Dynasty and early Republic Period (1850-1950). She sought out the ROM specifically, despite much larger collections of Chinese textiles in China, because she was interested specifically in a fairly recent period (rather than an older period where extant textiles might be thought of as more valuable) and the daily wear of ordinary women and children (as opposed to expensive and exceptional court wear), both attributes which she found difficult to find in Chinese collections, but a strength of the ROM’s Chinese textile collection. She took detailed descriptions of relevant garments, with the intention of completing a comparative study of the ROM’s collection and that of the Beijing Palace Museum, highlighting the contrasts in the scope of their collections of Chinese textiles.