Pillow Cover
Contemporary Machine-Embroidered Pillow Cover with pink and orange floral design
Contemporary pillow cover with machine embroidery on dark ground, featuring large peony-like blossoms surrounded by smaller flowers, curling vines, and foliage. Its dense floral vocabulary relates to the broader Thai lai dok mai tradition of stylized floral ornament. The prominent peony-like flowers reflect the long history of decorative influences into Thailand through Chinese ceramics and trade. Illustrating the migration of decorative motifs across cultures, what looks like a purely Thai floral design is actually part of a much larger history of Thai adaptation of Chinese and other Asian imagery.
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The intensely saturated palette and machine-embroidered construction give this traditional-inspired floral vocabulary a distinctly contemporary, commercial character. The extremely regular stitches are characteristic of contemporary commercial machine embroidery. The fact that this is machine embroidered rather than hand embroidered demonstrates how traditional ornamental vocabularies continue to be reinterpreted through modern production techniques.
Title: Pillow Cover
Date: 2024
Geography: Bangkok, Thailand
Medium: Cotton, rayon
Dimensions: H. 16 in. W. 16 in.
Provenance: Purchased at Weekend Market in Bangkok, Thailand
Inventory Number: TH.03
