badge of office

Single-eye peacock feather plume (hualing) wound with red silk thread at the bottom end. In the centre of the plume is a bundle of peacock eye feathers, and this is surrounded by long hairlike black feathers that spread out from the centre. Plumes of this type were attached to an official court hat. It was conferred by the Emperor upon nobles and officials from the first down to the sixth rank for distinctive achievement.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.

If you have any further information about objects in our collections or can suggest corrections to our information, please contact us: enquiry@horniman.ac.uk