Development of Chinese Velvets: Chinese Velvet Design, Use, and Weave Structure

Prior to Dr. Feng’s work, little research on Chinese velvets had been conducted since the ROM’s Harold Burnham’s 1959 study. Dr. Zhao surveyed the Chinese velvets in the ROM’s collection, focusing on compiling a full classification of the textiles according to their weave structures, designs, and usage. He described how these textiles were produced, using extant Chinese documents and illustrations as source material, and compared European velvets to those from China to clarify any influences in the production process, and to give a chronology of the Chinese velvet textiles in the collection.