Peking, Pechili province, China: a Manchu lady wearing a coiffure. Photograph by John Thomson, 1869.

A Manchu lady wearing a coiffure, wearing a quilted garment with long wide sleeves, seated facing front, posed against a light background. A Manchu coiffure differed from a Chinese one, and it therefore became a marker of ethnic difference among women. Represented here is the coiffure of a married Manchu lady. The basis of this coiffure consists of a flat strip of wood, ivory or precious metal about a foot in length. Half of the real hair of the wearer is gathered up and twisted in broad bands around this support, which is then laid across the back of the head. Thomson was intrigued by this simple, graceful yet strange-looking headdress, he thought it 'must have been designed, to represent horns . . . enabling the wearer to hold her own against her antagonistic husband'. For view from behind, see Wellcome Library catalogue no. 19900i