Plum and birds 

"Plum and Birds" was painted by Emperor Huizong using ink and color on silk. The silk support is key here. Its fine weave allows for incredibly detailed brushwork, evident in the delicate rendering of the plum blossoms and the birds' plumage. The absorbent nature of silk also affects the ink, creating soft, diffused edges. It's a world away from the sharp lines you'd get on paper. Producing silk was labor-intensive, involving sericulture, weaving, and dyeing, typically done by skilled artisans. The choice of silk as a ground, the quality of the ink, and the pigments all speak to the emperor's elevated status, while the subject matter—birds and flowers—is a traditional theme, imbued with symbolic meaning through the skill of its execution. This painting connects the manual labor of silk production, the artist's labor, and the patron’s power. It prompts us to reconsider traditional notions of fine art by asking us to consider the labor, class, and social context embedded in the work.