Interview with Robert Jacobsen
Curator of Asian Art
1. How old is this gate?
This moon gate dates back just to the 19th century. It was built by a high official during the Tung-chih (pronunciation: "DOONG-zhur")and Kuang-hsu (pronunciation: "GWAHNG-shoo") reigns of China's last dynasty, the Ch'ing. That puts it somewhere between 1862 and 1907.
2. Is this a common type of gate? Was the moon image used throughout Chinese history?
While this gate is only about a hundred years old, what's most interesting to me is that they seem to have existed already in Chinese architecture by the time of the Han Dynasty. This would be as early as 200 B.C.
We have some models made out of clay that were used as tomb figurines—buried in tombs for the Han aristocracy—that show us surrounding walls, pierced by the full circle, used as a door.
So the concept or the idea of a circular gate through a wall certainly has ancient roots or origins in Chinese architecture.
3. Tell us about the design and construction.
This particular one is made, of course, in wood. I think it's ingeniously designed or laid out. If you can start tracing what it's comprised of, you'll find an uninterrupted thread (1, 2) that interweaves on itself from the bottom, goes all the way up midway, to the very top center of the gate, then loops back on itself and intertwines itself back to the beginning, where it first started.
So, in essence you have actually a very difficult motif to carve. Of course, the Chinese were by this time were very, very well established in carving architectural ornament and decoration.
4. Where would this kind of gate be used?
Gates like this, carved out of wood, if they were well protected, could be used outside—and were. Most often, you'll see them inside of houses in hallways, acting as sort of a screen device that you would be able to see through on one hand, but still, it would define a space from one room to the next in a kind of open manner.
5. The circle lends itself to the practical aspect of a doorway, but is there more to it?
Of course the Chinese loved the idea of the circle because that's a Buddhist motif that has to do with completeness. The circle (and some will even say infinity) is, of course, a continuous thing—an element. But it does make, obviously, for very a pleasing and unusual kind of doorway or opening and effect.
6. Where specifically was this gate found?
Our moon gate here comes from a garden, the Yi Yuan (or Happiness Garden) in Suchou—a great garden city where a number of literati (Chinese scholars) began to gather during the early Ming Dynasty. They often created retirement mansions and villas there. It's a very wet part of the country—lots of canals, lakes, and beautiful scenery. It becomes a very intellectual crossroads of China. And this is the literati culture then, living there, that really develops the kind of garden architecture that we find here associated with, in fact adjacent to, our scholar's study.
7. But the gate and Scholar's Study are not from the exact same site?
Right, the gate here was from a different garden than our scholar's study comes from, but which is also from the Suchou vicinity. The study itself is a little bit earlier than the moon gate, which was built for the Happiness Garden. But it is very appropriate, and in fact we have installed it where a moon gate was installed in the house, from which the studio itself comes.
There's a tile roof (3) that would have protected it from the rain and the water, so that something as intricately carved as this could be exposed to the weather.
8. There's beautiful carving everywhere you look—both in the Moon Gate and the Scholar's Study.
By the 19th century, intricate carving (4, 5) was absolutely standard in Chinese upper class households. Decorative window grills and the cantilevered blocks supporting the roofs were often carved, and that's very true of our scholar's study here.
The idea of something like this moon gate then would have fit right in with the rest of the decorative elements carved into the wooden structure of the house itself. So the two tend to go together quite nicely.
9. Could you comment on the carved image at the very top?
I mentioned that the basic elements here on either side of the moon gate are actually a single strand that interlaces itself up to the center point at the top of the arch, and then reverses itself and comes back down again. So we basically have two strands interwoven on either side.
But, yes, right at the top where they do come together, there's a small, kind of roundel or plaque carved with the three star gods.(6) Now these are gods that again go back in Chinese mythology to the Bronze Age—a good 700 or 600 BC, or thereabouts. And they were associated with constellations or stars.
But they come to be emblematic of health, wealth and long-life or longevity. And these are three auspicious symbols, these various star gods, that just wish on the household itself—or people walking through the moon gate underneath these stars—that they will be blessed or have conferred on them these very human desires of living a healthy life, a long life, and preferably a wealthy existence.