Cleaning Vintage Silk Embroidery

Is "How to?" your question, Rosiposey? If yes, the answer is... Cleaning, if possible, would best be left to a professional textile restorer. (Is that mold I'm seeing? Perhaps from water damage?)

And, by way, your Chinese embroidered panel appears to be 100 years old or older so I think you'd be safe in describing it as "antique" rather than "vintage."

Debora

 

Welcome to the forum Rosiposey

good advice from Debora
I wonder if this is a rank badge? I think it was @2manybooks that posted one that was under glass on a tray. What size is it @Rosiposey?

 

There was a recent thread here re rank badges that has lots of valuable information.

https://www.antiquers.com/threads/help-with-scarf-please.60223/#post-3810243

Debora

 

Oh, and apologies. I completely missed that this was framed as a tray. (Time to change the ol' bifocals.) That would explain any water damage.

Debora

 

Thank you Debora - yes definitely older than 100 years. I will update my verbiage!

 

Always better to be (verbally) safe than sorry. Most people use the term "antique" when they should use "vintage"

Debora

 

Here's a useful article on rank badges:
https://journalofantiques.com/features/chinese-rank-badges/

Yours (assuming it to be the real deal) would be for a man. The disk in the upper left is a sun disk; on a woman's badge it would be in the upper right. I would guess the bird is a phoenix.

 

The one that I have (and posted on the earlier thread) is mounted in a very similar tray. I believe this was a common way to convert them for sale to collectors.

@Rosiposey, is yours under glass, or exposed? It is difficult to tell from the photos what the condition issues actually are. But it doesn't look good.

For cleaning, I would recommend you contact a professional textile conservator for an assessment and treatment plan. This is a complex textile. At least some of the embroidery threads appear to be metallic (thin ribbons of metal, silver or gold, wrapped around a fiber core), and these pose particular challenges in cleaning.

This website for the American Institute for Conservation provides a way to look for a conservator in your area. You should look for someone who has experience with Chinese rank badges.
https://www.culturalheritage.org/about-conservation/find-a-conservator

I believe your badge was for a fifth rank official, denoted by a silver pheasant, similar to this one:

https://cathy-hunt.co.uk/chinese-square-mandarin-rank-badge-of-a-silver-pheasant

 

In case anyone else is confused, I looked it up: Antique: a collectible item at least 100 years old. Vintage: A culturally significant item ranging from 20-99 years in age, worthy of being collected. Authentic, aged pieces in various conditions. Collectible: something inherently valuable or worth more than it was originally sold for.

 

I might quibble with the definition of Collectible.

Debora

 

Collectible - something you can fool someone into paying a daft amount of money for.