In the sumptuary metal and silk rugs of the Ming dynasty, weavers gave themselves greater license in every way. Nothing more ornate, rich and extremely brilliant can be imagined than the rugs they produced.
To the art rather than the craft of the weaver do such belong, and in ordinary collections they are rarely seen. When they appear they explain themselves.
In the K'ang-hsi period we find many different styles, each one more or less distinctive. There is the carrying on of the tawny golden brown color scheme that obtains in the Ming styles, while the designs employed show distinctively Persian influence.
The attempt at formalism which introduced radiating designs and a forcing of foreign motifs into compartments is an early K'ang-hsi method, but this was not fully developed until later, when Kien-lung weavers adopted it and used it extensively.
The Western Lotus appears in K'ang-hsi rugs, drawn in a way unlike any Chinese rendering of plant form prior to the latter part of the seventeenth century. This floral form with its accompanying stiffly-arranged foliation spreads over. the field of rugs that carry border stripes of solid colors of about the same general tone as those employed in the field.
