Chinese Embroidered Silk

Artist (Symbol in red) is unknown. Scene roughly translates to "Phoenix with 100 Birds". This is extremely delicate...amazing.

That's beautiful! Is it old?

xx

I have no idea but doubt it. I bought it at a flea market for a whopping 4 pounds. I'll have to look on the back to see if there are any other identifying marks.

I'm a new member. Is this image flopped? At least the characters read in mirror image, which is strange. If you could send me a better photograph of the seal, I might be able to identify the characters.
The phoenix is seen as a divine animal in Asia, a symbol of good luck, longevity and imperial power. One hundred themes are also common in Chinese art (and then under their influence in Korea, Japan). Have you ever counted the birds here?! Often there are literally 100 pictured.
BTW, these title characters seem to be also used in a Chinese song, perhaps with reference to an old poem.
Age? Difficult to know. I would presume not very old, but it is beautifully crafted.

Me again, actually I looked at this again and realized that I was wrong, it isn't flopped. But there is something unbalanced about the text, it is the bird character that particularly threw me off. Anyway! Sorry!

leejo - welcome again.

Thanks, that's very interesting. Do you read the language?

Perhaps Rob_C is off counting the birds.

xx

Thanks.
I do read it. Japanese art is my primary field but the characters are the same...although there are enough differences in meaning that you still need to look things up...here it reads (right to left) "100 birds, noble [female] phoenix" whereas in Japanese the "noble/courtly/aristocratic" character also has the more commonly seen meaning of "morning."

Most of these birds seem to be in pairs, this might have been meant as a wedding gift...?

Great, thanks for the story leejo.

Please would show us some Japanese art when you get time :ch3:

xx

Okay, I will. It may take awhile, I've never put photographs onto another site (am a little confused about how to do it, although admittedly I haven't tried it yet either, so perhaps it is easier than it seems. I'm not a natural talent on the computer, though, I may need to ask my 14-year old!!), and I have a number of projects that need to be polished off in the next few weeks...