Footnotes

• Although a part of the imperial symbolism from the Western Han through the Ming dynasties, the twelve symbols of imperial authority disappeared from regalia with the Manchu conquest in 1644. With the redistribution of the court dress code in 1759 the Qianlong emperor re-instated the use of the twelve imperial symbols. Although the 1759 doctrine expressed that all twelve symbols were to be used solely by the Emperor, the existence of robes such as this one and those in museum collections indicate that by the nineteenth century the gradual loosening of restrictions led to them also being used in semi-formal court robes (jifu) for the empress and dowager empress.
  
  For a nearly identically patterned 19th century twelve-symbol robe with a hurricane wave border in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts acc. No 44.9.2 see Robert Jacobsen Imperial Silks Chʻing dynasty textiles in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts p.114-115, as well as a similar patterned robe dated circa 1835 in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 45.48)
  
  Although the cream-color ground of this robe is unusual, a similar color woman's robe is in the collection the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession number 43.119).

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Category: Asian Art

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