Having visited many museums, I’ve encountered a wide variety of animal crafts.
This inspired me to create a series of artworks based on the animals I’ve seen in these museums.
In this series, I picked a lot of creatures from a 17th-century tapestry showing at V&A museum, this tapestry was made with Chinese silk imported to Mexico via Manila.
We can usually find a lot of bird shapes in ancient crafts.
Chinese mythical creatures with the appearance of a stylised lion.
It seems a cute frightened little bird.
A European-style crowned lion. Chinese people think that lion can drive away the evil spirits, so it gradually became the mascot outside the gate. Probably this tapestry was brought to Europe, this was why they added a crown on the lion’s head.
The large bird with bright plumage, probably a phoenix depicted as being similar in appearance to a peacock.This bird is surrounded by flowers and leaves of differing shapes and sizes.
These works I made are all based on real artworks in the museum.
Portion of a tapestry
1680-1720This tapestry was made with Chinese silk imported to Mexico via Manila. The red colour was made from crushed cochineal insects, which were native to South America. The bird in the centre is the mythical Asian phoenix, which is shown with the broad wing-span of the Andean condor. The mermaids play lutes, and some of the flowers resemble Chinese chrysanthemums.
This tapestry shows lots of magical creatures, birds and plants, including different coloured strawberries. Delicious wild strawberries grew in Peru. Merchants brought them back to mix with European ones to make the strawberries we eat today.
