A few weeks ago, I was contacted by someone in response to a call I made for interesting money banks that people remembered from their childhoods. She shared a picture of a funny one she had as a child, which she got on a trip to China to visit family. Because I had been struggling to find suitable playthings to portray that were not from Europe or North America, I also asked whether she could think of any other interesting Chinese playthings that I might not be familiar with. The following day, I was excited to find out that she had talked to her parents about toys they had played with as kids and was able to point me in the direction of a few items that she thought might fit the bill for this cabinet of plaything curiosities.

One of these was a cloth tiger toy or pillow (布老虎, bu lao hu), a traditional folk toy given to children in China when they are born to protect them against illness and evils, and bless them with good fortune. She thought they might be appealing because of their frequently goofy faces and colourful fabrics. The main thing that caught my attention about these was that they often did not look like tigers at all (most of them lacked stripes, for instance) and had obviously evolved into something more symbolic and conceptual over time.

A cursory peek into the world of Chinese cloth tigers was enough to learn that they include several subtypes (single-headed, double-headed, four-headed, mother and child, cloth tiger pillow, five poison tiger pillow), and a very wide variety of styles. I eventually settled on this character here, in storage at the Horniman Museum, because I liked its expression, and its worn, faded fabric made it easy for me to imagine it as an object in use. I came across a site [in Chinese] that also mentioned that the double-headed versions symbolise the harmony of yin and yang.

 Under the same tiger category, my friend also pointed to some tiger head shoes that children are given with the same symbolic meaning – as protection and as a blessing of health, strength, and courage. She mentioned, a little wistfully, that she had never had any herself, and I found the idea of something as full of tradition and symbolism as this being coveted in this way especially appealing. Had I known such shoes existed as a child, I am certain I would have hankered after a pair too; instead, living in the south of Spain, the object of my desire was a pair of equally bright red flamenco shoes with white polka dots.

I contacted the Horniman Museum for further information on this object, and was impressed and grateful when the Documentation Officer wrote back to me very promptly with the details they had on file.

We know the toy/pillow was donated by the ethnographer and curator Dr. Otto Samson and was accessioned in 1951, though it was displayed prior to this. The museum also has a very similar object also donated by Dr Samson, which was accessioned in 1948. This second pillow looks like it was possibly made by the same person – the leaf patterns of the pieces of fabric seem to match exactly. In this case, the fabric on most of this second pillow is described as pink, but it is hard to tell from the photographs whether the original colour of this one was the same.

The exact date of creation for these cloth tiger pillows is unknown, beyond that they are early 20th century, and certainly pre-1948. However, we do know from Samson’s biography that he undertook fieldwork in China, including an extensive trip to the north of the country in 1929, together with the head of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnography, Theodor-Wilhelm Danzel. The pillow, then, could be almost 100 years old.

Chinese cloth tigers have quite a specific set of attributes that, despite their conventions, leave plenty of room for variety and personalisation. Looking through a range of sites in Chinese, I came across a few videos (see first video, and following video) that contain graphics and visuals that are fairly easy to understand even for anyone who does not speak Chinese. I also came across explanations (same as above page, in Chinese) of the different features that are common to all cloth tigers – the tiger’s head and features are meant to convey innocence and childlike liveliness, reflecting the attitude of the children who will receive them.

Cloth tigers are made in several places in China, but the main producing areas are concentrated in the provinces of Shandong, Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi. These areas also coincide with where tiger-head shoes are mostly made. The tigers are meant to have exaggerated features, with big eyes, big grins, and short legs, but within this, there are regional variations. The colours used on cloth tigers in the Shandong province are mainly red and yellow, which are festive and auspicious colours in the traditional culture of northern China. But cloth tigers from Yishui County (within the province of Shandong) are not so rigid in terms of colours, and also feature black, blue, white, flowers and prints, using scraps of fabric. The page linked to above mentions cloth tigers being used as toys by day and serving as pillows by night in the countryside in this area. I wonder, then, whether this might be where our friend here is from.

These versatile children’s objects usually feature the word ‘king’ (王) on their head, referring to the tiger as the king of all animals. This particular example from the Horniman Museum does not appear to have this, but it does feature some of the other typical features – exaggerated eyes, big grinning teeth, short legs, and in this case, a double head. I wonder whether its colour has faded a great deal; having seen so many other bright fabrics used on other tigers, it seems unlikely that the scheme was always this muted.

This week I thought about the use of the tiger as a symbol, in China and elsewhere. It was fascinating to take a look at the tigers featured in the ancient rock art in China’s Helan mountains, some as early as 10,000 years old. I browsed through collections in museums and found some very lovely early Chinese depictions, such as this tiger pendant from 1300 BC -950 BC and this beautiful bone tiger figure from 13th-11th C BC. More than 20 centuries later in the 12th century, tigers were still heavily used in imagery, and interestingly seemed to feature frequently in stoneware pillows/headrests such as this one, this one, or this one [side note, see here for a nice study piece on a tiger headrest at the Brooklyn Museum, which talks about headrests in different cultures, and the tiger as a representation of yin in Taoism].

I found articles lamenting the disappearing art of cloth tiger making and it made me wonder at what point cloth tigers took on the more distorted shapes they have today. For instance, this wonderful cloth tiger pillow in the Qing Palace collection looks a great deal more like a tiger, and yet it still seems to be referred to as a cloth pillow given for the same symbolic protective reasons.

I also gave some thought to why I find it interesting to see a tiger used to symbolise the innocence of childhood. I thought of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience and re-read The Tyger. I came across this interesting article entitled ‘The Death of a Symbol. How Western Writers Exploit the Tiger’ by Aditi Natasha Kini. I pondered about yin and yang, and about innocence and experience, and how those two sets of opposing pairs are so different in nature and approach – these cloth tigers are, perhaps, lamb and tiger rolled into one.

I daydreamed about this pair of tiger pillows from the Horniman Museum belonging to two siblings. I imagined these siblings waking up from a nap, with droopy eyelids and flushed cheeks, creased with the imprinted lines of those crumpled tiger ears. One of them yawns, opening her mouth wide to show pointy little teeth, and then scratches an itch on her left leg with sharp nails, leaving red and white lines on dry skin.