File talk:Imperial 'dragon' throne carpet, Ming Dynasty, 16th century.png

‘Phenomenally rare’: one of only 16 complete Ming dragon carpets known to exist Auctioneer's notes and history of this rug, sold in paris by Christies on 23 November 2021, and copiously illustrated with historic 1901 photos of Peking's Forbidden City. Let's see if Wiki's spambot blocks the link: https://www.christies.com/features/Ming-dynasty-dragon-throne-carpet-11969-1.aspx?sc_lang=en&lid=1

"This superbly preserved 16th-century carpet — offered in the Exceptional Sale in Paris on 23 November 2021 — would have been placed beneath the emperor’s throne in Beijing’s Forbidden City"

"In 1901, after the subjugation of the Boxer Rebellion, a group of Japanese academics from the Imperial University of Tokyo travelled to Beijing to make a study of the secret royal complex known as the Forbidden City.

Accompanying the scholars was Kazumasa Ogawa, a pioneering photographer tasked with documenting the Imperial Palace and its grounds, which had been ‘jealously kept from public sight’.

Over the next few weeks, Ogawa took 170 stills of the magnificent, 180-acre palace complex — a citadel so beautiful that, in the words of the 13th-century explorer Marco Polo, ‘no man on Earth could design anything superior to it’."

Thw accompanying photos from 1901 should be PD for age, I think, and I'll add some to COmmons after checking the rules. --Pete Tillman (talk) 17:03, 13 November 2021 (UTC)