Rare And Old Large Polychrome Embroidered Silk Panel - China - XIXth Century

This is a large, rare and antique rectangular panel of embroidered silk (Nasha) in polychrome, woven on eggshell coloured silk gauze.
It is entitled "The battle of the chiefs".

A Rooster and a Pheasant in bright silk colours are fighting over a choice territory where the two Phasianidae, beaks wide open, let us imagine the cacophony of their hoarse and shrill cries.  
The Pheasant in China is the imperial symbol of authority, while the Cop is the symbol of positive strength that drives away bad influences.    

Period: 1st third of the 19th century
Dimensions embroidery : Height : 155cm x Length : 105cm
Dimensions with frame : Height : 164cm x Length : 115cm x Depth : 2,5cm  
Perfect condition.

Nasha embroidery, known in Europe as "half cross stitch on silk gauze", is a Chinese embroidery technique that appeared more than two thousand years ago. 

During the MING (1368-1644) and QING (1644-1911) dynasties, this technique flourished unprecedentedly, and was not only used for imperial furnishing and liturgical fabrics and court clothes, but also to imitate painting or calligraphy.

It consists of embroidering threads regularly on a specific silk gauze, the embroiderer must count the number of gauze threads to fix the position of each stitch. 
The stitch paths must be parallel to the horizontal or vertical threads, the gauze holes cannot be blocked. Normally, there are between 1000 and 2000 stitches embroidered on one square inch.

A large Nasha embroidery often consists of hundreds of thousands of stitches and several hundred different threads. A skilled embroiderer can only make a maximum of 3 square inches in a day. Because of this complication and difficulty, the majority of ancient Nasha embroideries are small, everyday objects, except for court clothes and civil service squares.