The new exhibit at Hong Kong’s Palace Museum is somewhat undersold by its title: “Wonders of Imperial Carpets”. There are indeed carpets—marvelous and quite extraordinary carpets—but the lesson of the exhibition—that of the two-way artistic and cultural influence between China and Islamic world—is mostly carried in the other exhibits, the bronzes, pottery, books, drawings and paintings drawn (with a few exceptions) from the collections of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar.
It’s hard to deny the star power of the carpets, starting with the so-called Rothschild Medallion carpet, a mid-16th-century masterpiece from Safavid Tabriz, which seems as bright as vibrant as it much have been when first made. (It clearly spent little if any time on the floor.) But it’s given a run for its money by several others, including a carpet with a hunting scene from a half-century or so later. This carpet, interestingly enough, was a gift from Shah Sulayman Safavi to Venetian General (and later Doge) Francesco Morosini.
But these large, extravagant pieces are complemented by smaller pieces from exquisitely ornamented Qur’ans and other books to miniatures and ceramics from various Persian, Indian, Turkish and Chinese dynasties. The most fascinating pieces are however those that show the influence of Islamic bronzes on Chinese ceramics, the Chinese pieces explicitly made for export (with examples starting from more than a millennium ago), the Middle Eastern fritware made in emulation of Chinese porcelain, and a very Persian-looking Qing carpet.
The political message implicit in the curation is made explicit in the accompanying signage: that China has had a long history of mutually-beneficial commercial and cultural relations with the Middle East in general and the Islamic world in particular, relations that have recently come to the fore again. Well, fair enough: it’s true.
Come for carpets, but stay for the rest.
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