Jin-silk Pillow Case with Woven Characters Meaning “Emperor’s Travel”

This pillow case was made by piecing together two irregularly-shaped warp-faced jin-silk patches, on which beige warp yarns serve as foundation and warp threads in light brown, jujube red and dark turquoise indicate patterns. While light brown warps appear frequently, jujube red yarns, after forming each width of 4.6-5 cm, interlace with 1 cm-wide area of dark turquoise, thus creating checkers by crossing the horizontal stripes.
The decorative pattern on this pillow case is believed to be illustrating the scene of an emperor’s travel based on the woven characters “大”、“王”、“出”、“由” (Da Wang Chu You, meaning the emperor’s outing with “由”, cause, equivalent to “游”, travel, in ancient Chinese as indicated in Long Flute Prose, 《长笛赋》, by Ma Rong of the Han dynasty).