The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Horizontally long handscroll in muted colors with four sections, the first filled with Chinese calligraphy, and the next three containing continuous illustrations of people with light skin tones engaging in various steps of making silk. The people work in single-story rectangular, open-air buildings with triangular roofs. The white of the silk contrasts with the beige of the scroll, particularly as it becomes more and more processed moving right to left.

Sericulture (The Process of Making Silk)

early 1200s

attributed to Liang Kai

(Chinese, mid-1100s–early 1200s)
China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
Handscroll; ink and color on silk
First Section: 26.7 x 98.6 cm (10 1/2 x 38 13/16 in.); Second Section: 27.6 x 92.3 cm (10 7/8 x 36 5/16 in.); Third Section: 27.6 x 92.3 cm (10 7/8 x 36 5/16 in.)
John L. Severance Collection 1977.5
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The painting is attributed to Liang Kai, a court artist active from about 1201 to 1204 at the Imperial Painting Academy in the city of Hangzhou, a major silk weaving center from that time to the present day.

Description

By the Southern Song period, the economic center of the silk industry had shifted to the lower Yangzi delta, while the north continued to be troubled by wars.

Divided into three sections, the handscroll illustrates 14 steps in the process of making silk. The scroll’s scenes follow the illustrations of Lou Shou’s (1090–1162) Pictures of Tilling and Weaving (gengzhi tu), the first recorded painting of this genre, which was conceived in Hangzhou around 1145. However, in the Cleveland painting the artist groups several scenes of sericulture together under the roof of an open structure.
  • ?–1977
    (Cheng Qi 程琦 [1911–1988], sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1977–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 61, pp. 78–80
    Lee, Sherman E. “Listening to the Ch’in by Liu Sung-Nien.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 9 (November 1986): 372–387. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 382–383, figs. 9–10 www.jstor.org
    Smith, Bonnie G., et.al. World in the Making: A Global History. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Reproduced: p. 387
    Zhao, Feng. “Silk Production in the Lower Yangzi Delta: Formation, Flourishing, and Later Developments.” In China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta, edited by Clarissa Von Spee, 52–58. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 54–55, figs. 18a and 18b, no. 49
    Itakura, Masaaki. “Jiangnan’s Beauty: Song and Yuan Paintings Prized in Medieval and Early Modern Japan.” In China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta, edited by Clarissa Von Spee, 64–71. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 66–67, fig. 34, no. 49
    Griswold, William, Xiaofei Tian, Richard Von Glahn, Feng Zhao, S. J. Vainker, Masaaki Itakura, Jiang Wu, et al. China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta. Edited by Clarissa Von Spee. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 158–161, no. 49
  • China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 10, 2023-January 7, 2024).
    The Splendor of Chinese Silk – Chinese Gallery Rotation 240a, 241c. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 5-August 12, 2018).
    Main Asian Rotation (Gallery 120). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (October 26, 2003-March 11, 2004).
    Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (November 7, 1980-January 4, 1981); The Cleveland Museum of Art (February 11-March 29, 1981); Tokyo National Museum (October 4-November 17, 1982).
    Year in Review: 1977. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1977-January 22, 1978).
  • {{cite web|title=Sericulture (The Process of Making Silk)|url=false|author=Liang Kai|year=early 1200s|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1977.5