Hair pin with a stylised bat, with kingfisher feather decoration, China, 20th century (TRC 2023.2525).Over the last year or so, Mrs Quirina Vreeburg from Haarlem, the Netherlands, has been giving the TRC various items from her collection of Chinese textiles and dress. These included some beautiful woven and embroidered gowns for both men and women, normal and lotus shoes, as well as a range of decorative purses and caps.
There have been several blogs about this donation, namely about the lotus shoes and about some other textiles, including a jacket made from reed. We have also already created a mini-exhibition with the lotus shoes and we are planning one about the various types of purses and their decoration.
Hair pin in the shape of a small sprig of flowers and leaves, with kingfisher feather decoration, China, 20th century (TRC 2023.2526).A few days ago, Quirina came to the TRC with another box! This time there were various examples of shoes (normal and lotus forms), some more purses and caps, 19th century prints (more will be passed on to the TRC in the future), and a group of tian-tsui (Chinese traditional: 點翠, Chinese simplified: 点翠), namely examples of kingfisher feather work.
Tian-tsui means ‘dotting with kingfishers’, and for various groups in China, the kingfisher birds symbolise beauty, as well as married (conjugal) love, since kingfishers are often found in pairs. So it is not surprising to find this type of decoration on objects for Chinese brides and married women.
Hair pin in the shape of a cricket with long antennae, with kingfisher feather decoration, China, 20th century (TRC 2023.2520).Kingfishers are small to medium size birds of the Alcedinidae family of the order Coraciiformes. There are 116 species that can be found in various regions in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania.
Apparently the Chinese felt that the best kingfisher feathers came from Cambodia, and were an important trade item for hundreds of years. It should be noted, however, that the birds were killed in order to ‘harvest’ their feathers and it is likely that over time hundreds of thousands of birds were destroyed for this trade.
Most species of kingfishers have brightly coloured feathers, including red, yellow and orange, which are based on naturally occurring pigments within the feather structure. The characteristic blue ‘colour’, however, is created by light reflecting off the (grey) feather structure in different manners (wave lengths). The 'blue' feathers actually have no colour at all, let alone such an intense blue.
In order to make a piece of tian-tsui the feathers were cut into small sections of the required shape and size and these were glued onto a metal ground. A wide variety of shapes, both abstract and natural, were created in this manner.
Headdress with kingfisher feather decoration, China, 20th century (TRC 2023.2518).
This style of work has been produced in various parts of China for at least 1000 years and probably much longer. There are a series of Song dynasty (960–1278) portraits that depict various empresses, including a number who are wearing ornate headdresses that include blue elements that are probably kingfisher feathers. One such portrait is that of a seated empress, who was the wife of Emperor Xuanzu (902-961) and the mother of Zhao Kuangyin (927-976), the founder of the Song dynasty.
Hair pin in the shape of a butterfly, with kingfisher feather decoration (TRC 2023.2522).Some of the earliest surviving examples of this type of headdress were found in the tomb of Emperor (reign: 1572-1620), which appear to have belonged to one or more of his wives. In addition, in the British Museum there is an elaborate example of a bridal headdress (acc. no. 1946,0713.15) decorated with kingfisher feathers, which apparently dates to the earlier part of Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
The items now in the TRC Collection that are decorated with kingfisher feathers include a bridal headdress (TRC 2023.2518), a headband (TRC 2023.2074), hair pins of various types with abstract shapes (TRC 2023.2519), floral motifs (TRC 2023.2526), butterflies (TRC 2023.2522), birds and flowers (TRC 2023.2532), cockerels (TRC 2023.2074), a bat (a symbol of good fortune, longevity and happiness; TRC 2023.2525), as well as a leaf (TRC 2023.2521) and even a cricket (TRC 2023.2520) with trembling antennae.
Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, 27 November 2023
