pumpkinpaix: ziseviolet: tonyglowheart: shewhoworshipscarlin: Hair ornament, 1368-1644, China. I&rsq

pumpkinpaix: ziseviolet: tonyglowheart: shewhoworshipscarlin: Hair ornament, 1368-1644, China. I’d be curious to know more about this, because the Met does have this attributed to Ming Dynasty China, but the provenance dates back to 1925 where it was sold to the Met (from someone in Paris I think?) and not before that, so I presume whoever sold it told them that it was a Ming Dynasty ornament. But… honestly I find myself somewhat skeptical without further information. And… the other problem is I’m finding similar pieces to this on ebay UK, and those listings date it more to 19th century but not prior. Now it’s possible that this does originate in Ming Dynasty and these other ones are reproductions, or that the ebay sellers are wrong about the origins too. But right now, I’m still… not super convinced. I have found a few references to a story about the founder of the Ming Dynasty being saved by a spider’s web and so vowing to treat spiders well, but I’m not 100% sure how reliable these miscellaneous webpages I found are, if this were a more common/known story I feel like I’d have found some more authoritative-looking websites vs the random looking ones I found? (tho maybe this isn’t well known and I’d have to dig deeper into academic sources) For reference here are the ebay listings I found: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ANITIQUE-AUTHENTIC-Silver-SPIDER-WEB-HAIR-PIN-COMB-Unique-and-Rare/174447664697 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/11-Halloween-Antique-Silver-Spider-Web-Ornaments-Place-Card-Holders-Rare-Vintage/224190444343 Ohhh thanks for researching this! I also thought it didn’t seem possible that this was from the Ming dynasty at first glance. On one hand, it’s hard to believe the Met would misattribute this, but on the other hand, those ebay links….lol. Wish there was more info on this! I actually think it’s fairly common for museums to misattribute works. people are just people after all, and can make mistakes. An old art history professor of mine would often look at things and go “ah, 19th c reproduction, wrong century, wrong century” etc. when we were in museums. I remember distinctly that there was a little object in a museum labeled “14th Century Icon” (or something similar) that looked like a miniature cabinet that had saints in the windows. She looked at it and said, “huh that’s interesting” and then examined it for a few minutes and said “actually, I think this is a 19th century creation using cutouts from 14th century manuscripts. see the craftsmanship at the edges there?” (she specializes in European medieval art) once she pointed it out, the whole thing looked really suspicious and I think she was right. so to be honest, I wouldn’t be that surprised if this spider were misattributed? I’d be curious if anyone happened to recognize it from something though. 19th century Europe is such a common culprit ahahah OKAY SO because I’m Me, I also went down a research rabbit hole because of this post, and I think that @tonyglowheart​‘s instinct is correct. @ziseviolet​, if you are at all interested in what I found. no idea if my frantic image searching has any merit, but I present my evidence:like roz pointed out, there are indeed a lot of similar reproductions of the same style of spider ornament out for sale. here’s one I found on etsy:the seller estimates they date to the late 1800s in the description.they are approximately the same size as the one listed by the met, which has their piece labeled at 4.8cm. here is another listing on etsy for almost the exact same item, but these ones are supposedly place card holders:this seller also has these listed as Victorian.I found yet another seller that has these listed as “Victorian Chinese” (which makes sense, given the chinese export silver)anyways, here is where roz also showered me with provided many links to other similar-esque pieces of metalwork, all dated to around the same time:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6however!! she also provided me links to these pieces:1, 2, 3, 4the second mentions chinese export silver. the third and fourth have maker’s marks: Sing Fat and Leun Hing, according to their listings, so we know (?? i mean, as far as any of this information is credible) that there were some chinese manufacturers that made something of this style.anyways, I then started looking to compare depictions of spiders in Victorian art to the spiders here. this selection of stock photos has a few depictions of spiders in webs (including a political cartoon lol) all dated to the 1800s. all of them have the spiders directly in the center of the web. (shot in the dark: making a wild guess that it’s because the archetypal spider image here is based on garden spiders, which are a common orb weaver species in the uk)you can of course find artwork from the same era with spiders off center from the web as well, but my point is, my quick search for depictions of spiders in chinese art turned up:these are all by the artist Qi Baishi, who would have been active at least partially during the same time.I’m not going to lie, I’m having a really hard time finding other depictions of spiders in traditional chinese art my brain is too fried to search in chinese right now. i found one painting of his where the spider was in the center of the web, but the web is unfinished:SO, then I remembered that I have an antique brooch that I bought for $1 from a antique shop in upstate new york like, 5 years ago? and the wire wrapping technique on some of the petals looked really similar to how the webs are wrapped on the piece in question (sorry, first image is blurry):here is a slideshow of some ming dynasty hair ornaments. I went digging (not very deep tbh it’s 10pm and at this point i just kind of want these thoughts out of my brain) for some other ming dynasty filigree work, and most of the results are gold. I found one example of something that claims to be ming dynasty silver filigree work on etsy ahaha, but again, the style of it is quite similar to the gold ones in the slideshow. if I search for chinese silver filigree, most of what shows up is chinese export silver made for europeans dated around the 19th century.for example:(more photos here)actually the coils on this bowl look similar to the coils on the body of the spider on the item in question. could that be entirely coincidental, since coils are like, the universal wire design? yeah, probably. idk. i haven’t been able to find chinese examples of that wire wrapped around a post in opposite directions technique, however.i don’t really remember where I was going with this, but here’s an article that roz sent me about chinese export silver. 18th and 19th century europe was really big into orientalism so you know. it makes sense.BASICALLY, i’m out of steam, but based on this very surface-level, feverish googling, I would’ve guessed that the ornaments that the Met has are chinese export silver made for victorian england based on their aesthetics/conception of spiders. i don’t think they’re based on traditional chinese conceptions of spiders…? mostly bc I just. Cannot Find any earlier chinese artistic depictions of spiders. based entirely on gut feeling, they don’t look chinese, but they DO look like something victorian englishpeople would use for a halloween party asldkfjls.does this theory hold any water? WHO KNOWS, I certainly didn’t look on jstor or anything, and I have taken a grand total of two (2) art history classes in my life, but now I’m done and i can finally rest. sorry for the messy execution. in conclusion: -- source link

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