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5. Jacket and Skirt Liao dynasty (907-1125)

Detail: skirt Compared to any other costume surviving from the Liao dynasty, this samite jacket and damask skirt is very unusual. Although the two items are now displayed separately, they would originally have been stitched together to form a kind of robe. Evidence that they were once joined was provided by a fragment of the samite still joined to the waist of the damask skirt. The style and technical features of these two garments are consistent with those of Liao costume. Such jackets with short sleeves and riding vent have been found at the tomb of Yelu Yuzhi, having widths ranging from 80 to 100 centimetres from sleeve to sleeve. However, more unusual is the combination of the samite of the jacket with the damask of the skirt. There has been only one similar find, now in a private collection, and it dates to the Tang dynasty (618-907). In this instance the jacket is of Central Asian samite and the skirt is of blue damask with a lozenge pattern. Unusually the Tang period skirt opened to the wearer’s right and had no riding vent at the back. The present jacket has a flat collar, 16 centimetres wide, of which the right end folds over to the left arm. The width of the garment, including the two short sleeves, is 116 centimetres. The total length of the jacket is about 74 centimetres, the width at the chest and waist both being about 92 centimetres. Two panels of the damask skirt have survived, both 81 centimetres in length, but with differing widths of 165 and 154 centimetres. Each panel has three or four pleats made along the waist, and on one panel two of these pleats are overlapped by 32 centimetres in order to create a vent for riding on horseback. The jacket uses satin samite with weft floats – in other words, it is a compound satin weft faced on both sides with weft floats on the front for the pattern. This is a standard fabric amongst finds of Liao costume. In total, there are five wefts in different colours, light brown for the ground and yellow, cream, white and blue for the pattern. This same weave structure was also found on a textile from the 10th century tomb of Yelu Yuzhi. The design of the jacket’s fabric are medallions which at their centre have a small rosette and radiating out a design of floral motifs, birds – probably geese and clouds. All the medallions are symmetrically placed on the warp and weft axles and lie in staggered rows on a clean and pure ground. The design unit pattern is of a fairly large size, being 24 centimetres in the warp direction and 28 centimetres in the weft direction; each medallion’s diameter, however, is only between about 7 to 9 centimetres. The skirt’s damask is a 1/5S twill pattern on 2/1S twill ground, and features a design of a field of floral scrolls on which are featured eight lobed medallions with a design similar to that of the jacket, but the birds in this case resembling eagles rather than geese. The floral scrolls of the ground pattern is the so-called ‘full ground’ (bian di) typical of the Song period, and first mentioned in the writings of Tao Zhongyi in 1366. The unit pattern is of the same dimensions as that of the samite jacket.

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