Excerpt from Illustrated Catalogue of the Furniture and Embellishments From the Imperial Palace, Pekin: Exquisitely Wrought Gold Ornaments From the Ceremonial Crowns of the Former Emperor and Empress of China, and Numerous Other Objects of Antiquity and Distinctive Artistic Excellence One of the striking exhibits of the present collection is a series of pure gold ornaments of the Imperial Crowns - those of both Emperor and Empress - disposed of by the Imperial family last spring. Should one contemplate, after lifting these finely spun and jeweled fabrics of the precious metal, sharing for an evening the onerous burden which imperiality thus exemplified incurs, one would readily agree that uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. But the imaginative might conceive of a single one of these golden phoenixes from the Empress's crown as a stunning tiara on a tall American princess, a sovereign of her people, on certain occasions. In beauty and softness of color some of the imperial brocades. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.