A museum, dedicated to the professional study of Chinese costume history, is to open to the public this November.

Preparations for the opening of the Chinese Attire and Costume Museum involve professors and students of Donghua University in the city, which specializes in textile and costume studies.

Bao Mingxin, an expert in Chinese costume history at the university, is the leader of the preparatory team.

Currently, it has collected over 600 exhibits from three sources. More than 400 of them are from university collections that were used as illustrations in lectures, and more than 100 costumes have been donated by enthusiastic citizens, says Cao Huang, Bao's assistant.

The famous Ningbo-based, garment-making group Youngor donated the remainder - 77 items valued at more than 1.4 million yuan (US$168,674) - which includes the most expensive article - a dragon robe made during the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1871-1908) in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

After thorough study, experts determined that the dragon robe is a superb piece of work of that time and it was made using the then very advanced weaving technique, kesi.

Kesi is a type of Chinese silk tapestry. The warp is stretched horizontally on the loom during weaving and weft is brocaded in tabby with small shuttles. The weft is not interlocked between differently coloured areas and small slits appear in the pattern contours. Kesi may be woven so that the fabric is reversible. When a kesi is suspended the warp should be vertical, according to textile terminology.

Bao pointed out that more complicated patterns on the fabric could be done with kesi techniques.

The dragon robe has eight symbolic patterns on it such as the sun, the moon, the sea, representing the power of the emperor and nine dragon patterns.

"These patterns could only be used by emperors, and it were made by the-then Jiangning weaving bureau which was located in the current Nanjing, one of the top three weaving bureaux at that time in China," Bao said. The other two were in Suzhou and Hangzhou.

The experts explained that not only emperors but also senior officials could possess dragon robes. The emperors would present dragon robes to senior officials of great achievement and family members as demonstrations of their largesse.

"There is a major difference between the emperor's dragon robe and the collections of the others," Bao said.

The dragon on the emperors' robes has five claws, but the dragons used others could only have four. The stitches of one claw were taken out to show people's respect to the emperor.

Li Meng, another assistant of Bao, said that both Youngor group and Donghua University each donated three dragon robes.

"These dragon robes are not the most expensive ones in China," said Bao. However, they have great value for professionals studying Chinese costume history.

Youngor's donation also contains early garment-making machines from the United States, Germany and Japan and irons made in Japan and China in the early 20th century.

Cao Huang said: "Enthusiastic citizens also contributed a lot to the founding of the museum. Many of their donations are of top quality."

Li Meng said the first donation from a Shanghai citizen was a Chinese-style wedding gown donated by Zhang Jueyou, now in his 70s.

The carmine wedding gown was not for Zhang's wedding, but his mother's. It was made in the 1910s.

Zhang has preserved the gown very well and it still looks new. Lotus and lotus root patterns, which are auspicious signs for a happy marriage, were embroidered on it. The trimming and buttons curled in the shape of flowers are exquisite.

Bao said, "The garment-making techniques in the first half of the 20th century are very worth studying. They combine hand work and machine work, which is rarely seen nowadays."

Bao said that the museum would mainly collect articles made in the period from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to the current time and archives from before the Qing Dynasty.

"Real articles made prior to the Qing Dynasty are extremely expensive and our aim in building the museum is just to show viewers the development of Chinese costumes. I believe multimedia displays of archive materials will help us realize our aim," he said.

Bao said that the museum has obtained financial support from the Ministry of Education which has allocated over 2 million yuan (US$240,963) to the preparatory team.

However, projected costs for setting up the museum exceed 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million).

"Therefore, donations from both companies and citizens are crucial for the museum," Bao said.

(China Daily May 3, 2004)