Eiren Shea: Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange

Transcript

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Tanja Tolar:

Hello everybody, and welcome back to New Books in Art, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm Tanja Tolar, the host of the channel.

Today we'll be talking to Eiren Shea about her new book, Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange. Eiren Shea, welcome to the show.

Eiren Shea:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Tanja Tolar:

Eiren, I wonder if you could begin the interview by telling us a bit about yourself.

Eiren Shea:

Sure. So I am an assistant professor of art history at Grinnell College in Iowa. And because I teach at a liberal arts school, I'm able to teach a wide variety of topics.

So I was trained as a Chinese art historian, but I teach about China and Central Asia, and even a little bit into the Middle East.

And my research is similarly broad. I'm obviously very interested in textiles. That's the medium that I focused on for my dissertation work and for this book.

But I'm interested in the connections between China and the rest of Asia, the broader world, in what we call in China the middle period. So 10th to 14th centuries.

Tanja Tolar:

And what led you to the research of Mongol dress and identity building?

Eiren Shea:

Well, I was always interested in cultural exchange. When I started my graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, I thought I would actually be studying the Tong dynasty... So that's a little bit earlier. That's 7th to early 10th centuries... Because that's well known as a very cosmopolitan period.

But then my first year, I took a class with my advisor, Nancy Steinhardt, about the Mongol period. And I just realized there was so much information that existed, and hadn't really been fully explored, especially from the Chinese angle.

And I've also always been interested in textiles. But it occurred to me that when you're studying nomadic peoples, especially... I mean, and anyone, but especially nomadic peoples... Textiles are extremely important wearable wealth.

And so I set off to learn more about how to analyze textiles, and I went from there. So I guess the beginning of graduate school, I was already oriented that way.

Tanja Tolar:

So where can we look for the origins of Mongol court dress?

Eiren Shea:

The origins, as I see it... So the Mongols were a disparate group of people, confederated in 1206 by Chingis Khan. So groups living in what is present day Mongolia.

And so they obviously were living, and had their own artistic products and rituals that they were engaging with in the pre-imperial period. But what I see as the origins for the court dress system starts with the formation of the empire.

So it starts with Chingis Khan and the rapid expansion of the Mongol empire across Asia, and the borrowing. They borrowed from different groups that they encountered as they went.

And I think, for me, I see... Especially in China with the Yuan dynasty, which was founded by Chingis' grandson, Kublai... I see the Khitan and the Jurchin, who were groups that ruled over large parts of North China, prior to the Mongol period, as a key inspiration for the Mongols.

They looked at these groups, which were semi nomadic, and how they were able to engage with the cultures of China and other sedentary civilizations, and use pre-existing motifs, pre-existing, I guess, art forms, and bring them into their own culturally significant activities, if that makes sense.

Tanja Tolar:

So what kind of material are we talking about? Is it silks, or is it something else as well, that they've been using?

Eiren Shea:

So in the pre-imperial period, the Mongols were not using a lot of silk. Silk was made in the south, so in Southern China. That's where silk was cultivated, and had to be imported to northern groups.

But very soon after the foundation of the Mongol Empire, we know that there were populations of weavers, weaving silks for the Mongols, in different places. In Central Asia, in present day China.

And so when I talk about Mongol court dress, I'm talking about, basically, luxury silks, and especially silk woven with gold, which I referred to it in the period as nasij, which is from the Arabic word. Probably refers to a compound weave, with an overall feeling of gold. What in western text is sometimes called 'cloth of gold', which is very unspecific, but it's probably a lampas weave. Silk with gold thread.

Tanja Tolar:

And where were these textiles produced? Would the court have its own textile production? But this was also a movable court, as I understand. Or would that be centralized somewhere? Or were there several centers of the textile production? How does that look like in the early period?

Eiren Shea:

Beginning in the 1220s, there were centers for weavers established, that made materials for the court. So although the court was moving, and there were multiple... And by court, there wasn't a centralized court, per se, in the early period especially, but the encampment would have been moving around.

But it's pretty clear, from beginning in the 1220s, that weaving centers were established. Because large looms are harder to move around. And so the Mongols seem to have established sedentary centers for the production of luxury materials.

And by the foundation of the Yuan dynasty in China, under Kublai, you have three specific centers of weavers who are staffed by, basically, Chinese and Central Asian weavers.

And there are three centers that specialized in the weaving of gold woven textiles for the court. So yes, there was centralized production. And they didn't move, although the court did.

Tanja Tolar:

So you said very luxury material silks, and it needs to be imported. But what other materials were they using for their robes? So what would the more general public be clad in, if not silks?

Eiren Shea:

Probably more practical materials like wool and felt. Certainly felt was really, really important to the Mongols, and to other nomadic groups. They were clothed and felt, but their tents were made of felt. The mats they sat on were made of felt. Felt is the nomadic material par excellence, because you can make it well on the move, and it's water repellent, and it's good for cold weather. So certainly felt.

And it also seems like there was probably woven wool as well. There's some evidence for that, but we don't have as much as we do for the silk material.

So even though people were probably not wearing silk in the quotidian context, that is what has been preserved in treasuries, and in tombs, and things like that. So it gives us a funny, unbalanced sense of what people were actually wearing.

Tanja Tolar:

Yeah, I just wanted to ask if we have anything of that preserved at all. Because a lot of this material would disintegrate through centuries. Obviously organic materials are prone to... Or reused, or just not preserved very well.

Eiren Shea:

Yeah. It's a shame. I don't think that there's very much wool material preserved from the imperial period.

I know that there was a somewhat recent excavation of a cave burial in Mongolia, that has some wool textiles. Women's robes made of woven wool that date from a couple centuries before the Imperial Mongol period. So I think about 10th century.

So we know that these existed, but unfortunately, I guess they were not prized enough to be preserved in the funerary context.

Tanja Tolar:

So your chapter two then discusses this that we've already touched upon, robing of Kublai's court. Could you tell us about your investigation of social and ceremonial functions that dress at Kublai's court had?

Eiren Shea:

Yeah. So this is something, actually, that is really special with the Mongol period in China, that the Mongols came in, and instead of adapting Chinese court ritual to their own purposes, they imposed their own ceremonies on this larger court. So that is in stark contrast with any groups that came before.

And something really important for the Mongols was hierarchical robing. So the gift of a suit of clothing articles, but a suit of clothing in particular, from the khan to his officials was like a contractual thing. It's unequal gift exchange. He gives them these articles, and in exchange he gets their loyalty, their fealty.

And so in the Yuan period... And even before the Yuan period, in the Imperial, starting in even the 1240s... We have records of this robing, and this gift exchange, started happening on a larger and larger scale.

And so the khan would gift thousands of his officials, thousands of his men, suits of clothing. And then they would all wear these suits of clothing to special ceremonies, which in the Chinese historical material is referred to as the jisun ceremony, which refers to the suit of clothing.

And they would all wear clothing of one color. And so, one day it might be red, and the next day it might be gold. And these robing events, these robing banquets, took place whenever it was special celebration. So the khan's birthday, or New Year's, or the beginning of the spring hunt, or the fall hunt. Anything majorly significant.

And so you would have all the khan's officials, all wearing the same color clothing, all wearing gifts from the khan.

And this is why it was so important to have these weaving centers, because if you're making so much clothing for the court, you have to have... I mean, they're producing it on an incredible scale. And so it was important to have several centers that were dedicated just to the production of these robes.

Tanja Tolar:

So if we would find ourselves transported back in time, attending something like that, a very special event, would we be able to distinguish who is who among these people at the court? Would the court dress be specific to certain positions within the court? So different colors? Or you say everybody was wearing the same color, but were there any signs or iconographical motifs, or something that would distinguish them?

Eiren Shea:

Not at the beginning. Not during Kublai's reign. Not at the beginning of this period. Especially for us as outsiders.

This is something that is in contrast to other court dress systems, including the Chinese court dress system.

In China, before the Mongol period, in the Song dynasty, and earlier as well, there were nine official ranks, and officials would be assigned colors, based on their rank.

This was not the case in the Mongol period. People were not distinguished by the color of their clothing. They would all wear the same color clothing.

However, by 1314, so middle Yuan dynasty, you get the first sumptuary regulations. And these are not based on color, and they're not based on insignia, or anything like that. They're based on material.

So if you were an official of a certain rank... by that time, 1314, the Yuan had fully adapted the Chinese bureaucratic structure of the 9... Well, it's really 18 ranks. Nine different ranks divided by two. So upper and lower first rank, upper and lower second rank, et cetera.

So depending on your official rank, you could use certain materials, such as gold thread, or stamped gold, or certain jewels. But it was still all relatively luxurious when you read these regulations.

So I think that it would've been difficult, especially for an outsider, to necessarily discern the rank of different officials, based on what they were wearing. Because everyone might be wearing the same color, but maybe someone has nicer pearls, or jade, or rubies. But I think it was a bit more subtle than it had been, certainly at the Chinese court.

And I will say that something we think about, maybe when you think about Chinese official dress... If you don't know anything about Chinese official dress... You think about rank badges, right? The Mandarin square, which was the signified rank in the Ming and Ching Dynasties, after the Mongol period.

And these rank badges actually originated in the Mongol period. But they didn't signify rank in the Mongol period. They were adapted to signify rank later. So it's not a hierarchical system in the way that the Chinese bureaucratic system was inherently hierarchical.

Tanja Tolar:

Well, that's really interesting. I found that part of that chapter really interesting to read, because you go more in details about these badges, and the [inaudible 00:18:50] colors, and details of certain robes, specifically the robes with under arm openings.

Could you tell us a little bit more about that? What kind of a shape it is? Did this opened under armed garments had special function? I mean, it was really interesting to delve into that topic.

Eiren Shea:

Yeah, they're a little bit mysterious. So we know that a lot of the court robes worn by... It seems both men and women, but we especially have evidence for men... Had these under arm openings. And you can see them in paintings, because you can see the robe underneath. Different color.

Some people have speculated that it allows the wearer to slip their arm through the under arm opening, and create a short sleeve version of the robe. So that could be. Or air circulation. So it might be functional, maybe.

But I think the form of it ties to a larger and older Eurasian style robe. So we have examples from centuries before. I'm thinking of robes found in Antinoopolis in Egypt, that have these underarm openings, and extremely long, thin sleeves.

So actually, the sleeves in that case wouldn't have been worn, and the wearer would've just slipped their arm through the under arm opening.

And so it seems like these under arm opening robes probably, I think, connect to this special type of robe that existed in different parts of Asia, and I guess into North Africa, in the centuries before.

And we have, if you look at the Ilkhanate manuscripts... So the Mongol court in West Asia... If we look at the paintings of courtly figures in the Mongol style, many of them are wearing robes with the sleeve dangling to the side.

And others have written about this, as maybe it signifies kingship. They're far too widespread in the Yuan to signify kingship. So I think maybe they have different significance in different parts of the Mongol Empire. But I think they do tie into this older style of robe, with the dangling sleeve. Although in the Yuan we see that they're wearing the sleeves as well.

Tanja Tolar:

Yeah, definitely really interesting element. So you already mentioned a little bit, but would you mind elaborating on your discussion, how these visual depictions of Kublai Khan developed beyond Chinese references? What kind of visual material is out there, that can tell us, or informs us about this?

Eiren Shea:

Well, Kublai is only depicted, in the Chinese context, in two paintings that I know of. There's one that's attributed to the Nepalese court artist, Anige. Just his portrait, which is probably intended as a memorial portrait, an ancestor portrait eventually.

And then there's another of Kublai Khan hunting. Famous painting, attributed to Liu Guandao, showing Kublai with his favorite wife, Chabi, by his side, out hunting.

It's a weird painting, because it's clearly not a realistic style hunt. But it's showing Kublai at the center of this world empire, in some ways.

So in the Chinese context, you have only these two paintings. And they're very different, and they show different types of dress, and they're showing different aspects of Kublai's rules, both as a Chinese emperor, I would say, and as the Mongol khan.

And then outside of the Yuan context, in the major pictorial tradition of the Mongol Empire, is, of course, in the Ilkhanate. And the artists working at the court in the Ilkhanate, who are making these manuscript paintings, are... Just as in the Yuan, we have a combination of certain Chinese painting traditions, with the new aims of the Mongol empire.

So in the Ilkhanate you have a combination of older, indigenous painting traditions from West Asia, with this Mongol subject and Mongol flair.

So I think for pictorial representations, there aren't as many as one would hope. I wish the corpus was bigger. But I think that when you look at the images, you see this bringing together different cultural elements, in media that was not traditionally something that the Mongols had engaged with. And of course, the people who are painting these are not Mongols. They're employed by the Mongols.

Tanja Tolar:

Yeah. Very important distinction, I guess. I especially enjoyed, in this visual representation as well, to look at the images where they have this really strange... Should I say that? Very large hats depicted.

You have a very interesting discussion on the hats, but also on the belts. Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about that? Did they had a special function? How were they wearing those large hats?

And of course we'll talk about the Chabi, and the female garments shortly. But I just got extremely interested in these hats, because just imagining wearing that would be extremely uncomfortable.

Eiren Shea:

You're talking about the boqta, the married woman's crown? Yeah, people love the boqta. Definitely, every time I talk about Mongol dress, I get the most questions about the boqta, I think. They're really striking.

So they're the crown of married Mongol women. And they are a couple of feet tall, and they are made of a birch bark structure. They're hollow and then covered in cloth.

So they may have been covered in wool or felt earlier, just as clothing, the same as the clothing would've probably been wool or felt in the quotidian context and in the pre-imperial context.

But those that have been preserved, and those that are depicted, are made of silk. So covered in silk, either gold woven, lampas, nasij, or all the depictions are of red silk boqtas.

And the crown itself was put on the head through a hood with a hole at the top of it, and it would be attached with the strap under the chin. So it was pretty secure.

So I don't know if it would've been too uncomfortable, because they weren't very heavy. But I do imagine that it was a little bit awkward to have this two foot protuberance on your head.

So this is definitely part of court dress, and it's something I argue for in the book. Mongol women were extremely active. They were able equestrians. They were the ones who ran the home camp. They basically did all of the child rearing, and the herding, and all the major functions of daily life.

And I imagine that doing all of this whilst wearing a boqta on your head would've been pretty annoying. And so, although we have a lot of descriptions of Mongol women wearing these, I assume that they were worn for special occasions, so like court ceremonies, and maybe if visitors came. They were part of formal dress, but I don't think that women were wearing them in a daily context.

I will say too, that not only is it very striking, and visitors to Mongol court all write detailed descriptions of them, and we also have evidence for them pictorially and archeologically. And they're something that really identify Mongol women immediately. You see an image with this tall boqta, and just immediately you can identify it as a Mongol woman.

And I'll say that also, several boqtas have been excavated, actually, in Western Siberia and in the Volga river basin, so in the area of the Golden Horde.

So this was something that was worn, it seems, across the empire. We have images from the Ilkhanate, we have images and excavated material from the Yuan, we have excavated material from the Golden Horde. So it was clearly quite special and quite widespread.

So I don't know that they were wearing them all the time, but they certainly were wearing them frequently. And it was an important symbol of Mongol identity.

Tanja Tolar:

Well, you dedicate a special chapter to Chabi, to Kublai's most influential wife. Obviously she would be wearing this boqta, as you say, but is there anything else that would distinguish her from other women at the court? Again, in the dress or in designs? Something that we could visually understand that she's Chabi?

Eiren Shea:

I think probably she was wearing more jewels than other women. The only images that we have of mass assemblies of Mongol women in the courtly setting are from Ilkhanate manuscripts. So if we want to extrapolate that... We're making an assumption that the court at the Ilkhanate is... The Mongol court, the Ilkhanate is looking like the Mongol court at the Yuan.

But in the Ilkhanate material, we see that the Mongol women are all dressed in red robes, red boqta. They're all wearing basically the same thing.

But I would say that when we look at the portrait, of course, just like Kublai, Chabi's image in China only exists in the same two locations as Kublai's. So her memorial portrait, and then in Kublai Khan hunting by Liao Guandao.

And in her memorial portrait, we see that her boqta, and her ears, and her neck, she's just totally dripping with pearls, basically. Big pearls. And also something called maybe hyacinth stone, which is not a ruby, but it's a big red stone. So she's wearing a lot of very valuable stones.

And so I would think that, just like the khan, the khatun, basically, she's wearing this very similar style dress as the rest of her court, but just a nicer version of it. More elaborate, nicer materials, more jewels.

Tanja Tolar:

So you've already mentioned some of the textiles where they are preserved. My question is, is there an object, is there a textile fragment, or a piece of garment that you find particularly interesting?

Eiren Shea:

Well, that's a good question. I'm thinking my Rolodex of Mongol textiles in my head.

Tanja Tolar:

Sorry.

Eiren Shea:

No, no, it's fine. I mean, there's so many that I... I love this material. It's one of the reasons why I study it, is because I think it's so interesting. And it's very diverse, even though I keep saying it's all silk and gold. There's lots of different patterns, drawing from all over Asia.

I'm trying to think of one in particular that I really like. Maybe the boqta in the China National Silk Museum in Hung Jo, which they've lovingly restored. So it's made of nasij. It's made of gold woven lampas. And it has some pearls on it as well. So some of the ornament has been preserved.

And it's a beautiful object. It's been well restored. And I illustrated it in my book, and I like it because it's big. And when you see it in person you see how big it is.

I guess another object would be the robe on the cover of my book, which is a bian xian, or braided waist robe, that has woven decorations in gold on the shoulders.

And I like that robe because it isn't the flashiest robe preserved from the Mongol period, but it's the typical male mongol robe, with this braided waist. And it has some gold decoration.

And I think it shows that they weren't all necessarily covered in gold, but often gold was incorporated as a design element, even in robes like this one, which is made of silk. It's a nice robe, but it's not the nicest robe. So I think it's nice because it's sort of a middle of the road court robe, and I like that about it.

Tanja Tolar:

How big are these garments? This question comes because I'm always fascinated to see, for instance, medieval Western European courtly dresses. And it shows that people were really tiny. They were like one meter and a half or something like that. And those dresses would not be something you and I could actually try on, because they're so much smaller. How big are these garments?

Eiren Shea:

They are also not huge. I know. Someone asked. They were like, "Can you ever try on these textiles?" And I said, "No. That's not how we treat historical garments. But also I wouldn't fit."

So what I would say is, there's often a lot of material. So especially in the skirt. So when they're displayed, if they're not displayed on a mannequin, if they're displayed flat, we see that they're made of a lot of material.

So the Mongol women's robes especially, they're very, very big. They're very wide. But I would say they're pretty short. If you actually stand up to it, like you're saying, people were probably more like a meter and a half tall. Not two meters.

But they're made about a lot of material. A lot more material than we use in our clothing today. And so for the Mongol women's robes especially, they trailed behind them when they walked, and the sleeves would bunch up around the wrists, and they're very voluminous.

So I think that something that's striking, actually, about Mongol court dress, when you see it in person, is that it doesn't seem small, like medieval European dress can sometimes seem quite petite, I think because of the quantity of textiles that were used. And again, that's because it's luxurious to use so much fine material. It's a symbol of a symbol of power.

Tanja Tolar:

Yeah. Fascinating. So one of the main themes of your book is that the Mongol period across Asia saw this introduction of something like international Mongol visual style.

And it spread, literally, across Asia relatively quickly, you say within a generation. What would you think... Why was such a success for this, and how it was achieved, beyond the, obviously, expansion of the Empire?

Eiren Shea:

It's a good question, because I mean, it's astonishing. You see, within a generation really, material that is being produced in both present day Beijing, which was called Dadu at the time, and Tabriz. So almost 6,000 kilometers apart. And the boqtas are similar. The court ropes are similar, if we're talking about women's dress.

When people talk about the Mongol Empire, they often talk about these courts interchangeably, which I think we shouldn't do. We should talk about them individually. But it's because it's so striking. The similarities are very striking.

And I think it's because the Mongols, their dress was very recognizable, and it was recognizable as powerful. They were the powerful group.

I mean, it's a huge contrast in China especially. In previous non-Chinese groups that had taken over large parts of China, so the Liao and the Jin, they adapted a lot of Chinese customs to their own uses, including dress. So they used Chinese court dress, and used Chinese court ceremonies to show their own power. They usurped it.

So the Mongols didn't really do that. I mean, they allegedly did do some Chinese rituals, but that wasn't their way of showing power. Their way of showing power was imposing their own visual culture in these different places.

And I think people understood it as powerful. I mean, it was very, very effective. I think in part, it's goes back to the boqta again. It's so recognizable. You see it and you immediately know that it's a Mongol court lady.

And so I think... Well, the boqta certainly is unique. I don't like using the word unique very often, but I think the boqta is unique to the Mongols, is the unique visual symbol that is instantly recognizable and then easily adopted, I would say.

Tanja Tolar:

So your last chapter deals then with trade in luxury textiles, for and two European and Mediterranean markets. Why were these textiles so popular in Europe?

Eiren Shea:

Well, I think it goes back to the centuries before, just as with many other things. So I think that the desire for eastern style textiles, certainly we can trace back to the crusades, and this idea... I'm not a European historian, but others have argued, and I think pretty convincingly, that there's a connection between eastern objects, eastern textiles, and the Holy Land, which is maybe one of the reasons why Mongol textiles and other eastern textiles before the Mongol period show up so often as ecclesiastical vestments. This is one of the major sources for Mongol textiles, is European church treasuries. And so I think that there was a connection in the Latin imaginary with the Holy Land.

But I think also, Mongol textiles are luxurious, they're covered in gold, they're beautiful. They bring together all sorts of imagery from across Asia. And I think, to a certain extent, the Latin west was aware of the Mongols. I mean, certainly, because they made it all the way to Hungary in the 1240s.

But as the 13th century went on it, the idea of the Mongols changed from this terrifying specter to, "Oh, potentially an ally against the Muslims. They don't have religion, so maybe we can convert them to Christianity, and they can be our ally against the Muslims. And they have really nice things. They have these really nice textiles."

So I think it was this idea of, maybe not power in the same way that Mongol textiles conveyed power across the Mongol Empire, areas that were ruled by the Mongols. But certainly this idea of luxury, and a certain amount of power, that was appealing. I mean, also they're just intrinsically valuable and beautiful. So I think there's that too.

Tanja Tolar:

Okay. I'm Tanja Tolar and I'm talking to Eiren Shea about her book, Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange.

If I may, at the end, just tie into, obviously the robes, the Mongol textiles in Europe, in European courts as well as markets. They have a specific term for them, so they were recognizable, just it seems like everything with Mongols was recognizable. And they're called [foreign language 00:44:02].

But at the end of your book, you also touch upon something that I find very important. And that's this othering of the Mongols. So obviously the material culture, that is precious by itself, the way it is produced, the way it contains the gold weaved into the fabric, but also the depictions of the Mongols within European culture. Specifically, I think you refer to Italian masters and the fresco paintings. Would you tell us a little bit more about that?

Eiren Shea:

Yeah. So figures that I think we can identify pretty reliably as Mongol, or at least as how the Mongols might be imagined by these Northern Italian painters, show up in early Renaissance paintings.

And often they are taking part in torturing a saint or martyring someone. There's one fresco that has a figure dressed as a mongol khan. And what do I mean by that? I mean, they often wear of pointed hats which were associated with the Mongols, they're often clad in gold woven textiles, with the repeat patterns that are characteristic of Mongol textiles. Repeats of floral patterns or of fantastic animals.

They often have the type of braids or facial hair that we associate with Mongols. So that's what I mean by identifiably Mongol figures.

So I'm thinking of one fresco in a monastery outside of Rome, and it's a figure... He's dressed like a Mongol khan, and he has the cloth of Christ. And the Roman soldiers sort of arguing over it, and it's like he is in the center of it.

And so I think that it's interesting, the way that the Mongols are depicted in these various paintings, because I mean, they're not good, but they're not necessarily the worst. They're often taking part in something as one of many characters.

So the Roman soldiers are arguing over Christ's cloak, and the Mongol khan is in the middle of it. Or different figures are torturing St Peter, and a Mongol figure is looking on.

So I think that they're figure of maybe luxury and opulence, often the way that they're depicted, but also something to be feared. Or not trusted anyway.

Tanja Tolar:

Well Eiren, thank you so much for this wonderful look into Mongol textile culture and building of their identity. Just before we finish, what are you currently working on? Are you still focusing your research on the Mongols, or is there something else in your cards?

Eiren Shea:

I'm working on a couple of projects, but definitely several of them tie into the Mongol material. I am increasingly interested in the material coming out of the area of the Golden Horde, so present day Russia, and Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, to name a few of the countries that covered the Golden Horde.

There's a lot of archeological material there. And so I'm interested in looking at that in the broader context of the Mongol Empire, but also differentiating what made these courts in the Mongol Empire different from each other. How was visual culture being used differently at each place?

Because as I said before, they aren't interchangeable, although we often use this material interchangeably. I guess I'm interested in looking more at the local contexts of this larger empire. So I have a larger project going on, that will be looking more into Golden Horde material.

I'm also looking into the actual materials a little bit more. So I've been investigating the production of gold thread. I recently wrote an article about gold thread in the Mongol period, and I'm hoping to look into the impact on a specific type of gold thread that was proliferated during the Mongol period, and its impact on the luxury textiles of Europe.

Because the type of gold thread that was preferred in the Mongol period was very different from the gold threads that had been used previous to that period. So I'm looking more into detail on that.

And then I have another project that is looking more into the Mongol legacy in the Ming. So yes, all connected to the Mongol Empire, but taking the material from the book, and delving in deeper, and trying to be more specific.

Because although my argument in the book is that you have this larger, recognizable pan Asian Mongol culture, I think it's really, really important to look at the Mongols on their own terms.

And part of that is looking at the Mongol Empire in very specific places, and how these phenomena were expressed, not just on a really large scale, but also more locally. So I guess it's the global and the local.

Tanja Tolar:

Fantastic. I'm already looking forward to that. So more to the Mongols in the future. Thank you very much, Eiren, for your time, and for sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you.

Eiren Shea:

Thank you.

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