Since I have visited a lot of museums, I found pretty diverse animal crafts there, and I decided to start doing a series of animals what I have seen in museums.
● Victoria and Albert Museum / London
In this series, I picked a lot of creatures from a 17th-century tapestry showing at V&A museum, this tapestry was made with Chinese silk imported to Mexico via Manila.
These works I made are all based on real artworks in the museum.
Portion of a tapestry
1680-1720
1680-1720
This tapestry was made with Chinese silk imported to Mexico via Manila. The red colour was made from crushed cochineal insects, which were native to South America. The bird in the centre is the mythical Asian phoenix, which is shown with the broad wing-span of the Andean condor. The mermaids play lutes, and some of the flowers resemble Chinese chrysanthemums.
This tapestry shows lots of magical creatures, birds and plants, including different coloured strawberries. Delicious wild strawberries grew in Peru. Merchants brought them back to mix with European ones to make the strawberries we eat today.