LARGE SILK BROCADE 'NEW LUNAR YEAR' PANEL
19TH-20TH CENTURY
十九至二十世紀 織錦戲珠龍及十二生肖紋墊面of rectangular form, finely woven with three clusters of lotus roundel enclosed by scrolling tendrils surrounded by two pairs of confronting five-clawed dragons chasing flaming pearls and Buddhist lions, the border with repetitive twelve-zodiac animals
251.5cm x 102.7cm 
From the collection of Benjamin Everett Gill (1838-1901) from Aberdeen. Benjamin E Gill was a shipwright with Hall, Russell & Company. He built and sailed to Japan in 1869 on the Jho Sho Maru with Thomas Blake Glover who had commissioned the vessel. After they arrived in Nagasaki in January 1870, Thomas B Glover sold the boat to the Kumamoto Domain and that started the Japanese navy. A collection of Asian Art was brought back to Scotland by 1884 when Benjamin E Gill got married. The illustration shown Benjamin E Gill in Nagasaki in the early 1870s. The collection was passed down by direct descent to the current owner's father and mother, Michael Peter Gill (1934-2015) and Shiona Airlie (1953-2023), and subsequently grew. Michael P Gill was the head of art at George Watson's College, and Shiona Airlie, who had a lifelong love of everything Chinese, its history, culture and language, was the author of Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1989) and Scottish Mandarin: The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston (2012). 
The motif of the twelve zodiac animals is related to the New Lunar Year. This panel was possibly put out for the New Year and it would be spread over a table.