The palace where cats rule the roost — and windows

A cultural treasure’s souvenir collection has been given a feline touch

Within 20 minutes, 400 limited edition pieces of jewelry created by the designer Fang Yimin for the Palace Museum were sold out on the online shop of the Palace Museum in Beijing. Even she missed out on buying a piece.

In bracelets, earrings, necklaces and rings that Fang has designed for the Palace Museum, the central element is a kitten playing with a round carved window, a depiction inspired by a tale about an emperor living in the Forbidden City with his beloved cat.

Fang, 35, runs a popular account on the social media app WeChat devoted to fashion that boasts more than 900,000 followers. Last year when the Palace Museum invited her to work with it by designing some jewelry she was surprised and excited, she says.

The Palace Museum is very picky when it comes to the merchandise it brings out, but it’s open to new ideas.” Fang Yimin, designer

“This is the first time I have designed things for a museum rather than a luxury brand.”

After doing a lot of resea—rch on stories about cats in the Forbidden City, she decided to use them for her jewelry design instead of typical images such as of princesses and of elements of traditional architecture that the Palace Museum naturally bring to mind.

“The Palace Museum is very picky when it comes to the merchandise it brings out, but it’s open to new ideas,” Fang says. It took 10 months to produce the jewelry she designed, she says.

Fang says that on many visits to the Forbidden City she saw cats sleeping on window lattices, so she decided to include them in her designs. For her, cats there stand for love and companion ship,illustrated no better than by the life of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), whose cat accompanied him until his death.

Since Fang’s jewelry went on sale in August, they have proved to be extremely popular, even though, priced at between 399 yuan ($60) and 699 yuan, they are a lot more expensive than other museum merchandise.

PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY Jewelry designed by Fang Yiming is on sale at the Palace Museum with a design inspired by the cats she saw sleeping in the windows of the Forbidden City.