I fell off the blogging bandwagon for a while. It's more of my picking up and putting down research and less of progressing research with no update. My mundane life has taken a turn for the busy and, as a result, my research has suffered a bit.
That doesn't mean I've not doing anything.
I took a break from the class breakdown in Persian art and moved over to the Chinese manuscripts. I had been finding that the non-acculturated Mongol's in Persia is difficult to find in the resources I've been able to recover from the public domain, as I'm a hobbyist and not a traditional academic. My BPL card has also expired unexpectedly, which causes another bump in the road.
In China, though, it's easier for me to discern what I'm looking at. Generally, I'm more familiar with the artistic styles of the Chinese through out time and have a greater understanding of the social structures and cultural nuance from my days before the SCA.
They paintings are more abundant because of cultural frictions intermixed with a stubborn lack of intercultural exchange in the upper echelons of Chinese Imperial society during the Yuan period. Instead of working in tandem, like in Persia, the Chinese were ruled by the Mongols who did not "go local" but did learn the philosophies.
I've been able to become confident in nailing down that the fanciness of any given figure's fabric pattern/weave. It does answer a fundamental question I came into this project seeking to answer. Seeing that it is consistent between China and Persia suggests that it was a Mongol social status rank marker and it is less likely that it is a convention of the respective cultures to derank certain positions over others.
At this point, I need to revisit the common themes and motifs documented in academic resources so I can begin to up my personal game futher.
