trade sign

General view of whole of Horniman Museum object no 26.1.59/1
General view of whole of Horniman Museum object no 26.1.59/1

Carved wooden shop sign advertising Autumn or Moon cakes, which are eaten at the moon festival on the 15th day of the 8th month. The inscription is of three raised black characters on red ground. It is decorated with openwork carving of flowers, leaves, and a bird painted in gold, identical on the obverse and reverse. The two Chinese characters ‘中秋zhong qiu’ in the horizontal inscription literally mean 'mid-autumn', also known as the moon festival. Underneath is carved one character ‘餅 bing’, which translates as ‘cake’.

object
MUSEUM NUMBER
26.1.59/1
PLACE
CULTURE
Chinese Peoples
COLLECTION
MEASUREMENTS
overall: 1125 mm x 545 mm x 120 mm
MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE
wood; iron; paint
CATEGORY
Anthropology: Ethnography
LOCATION
On display: Horniman Museum > World Gallery > Introduction > Sentiment - right
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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The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive.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.

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