Fired clay with lead glaze
25-220 CE
China
Museum Rietberg
Details
Culture/Civilisation
Ancient China, Eastern Han Dynasty
Theme
The Great River Civilisations outside India: Mesopotamia, Egypt and China
Subtheme
Ancient China: The Great Northern and Southern Rivers
Case Title
China - mastery in making
Display Location
Coomaraswamy Hall
Findspot
China
Measurements
35 x 29.5 cm
Accession Number
RCH 2107
Description
‘China’: a country and its pottery
The storage jar along with the house and stove model displayed in the exhibition, combines closely observed detail with subtle glazing, achieved through complex firing processes. Achieving ceramic perfection has for millennia been a Chinese preoccupation. It is no accident that in English ‘china’ means not just the country, but the pottery that it has always regarded as a supreme art form.
Curators Comments
This storage jar has wild, mythical, and fantastical animals climbing, flying, scampering, and prancing. The yunqi (cloud) motifs show this to represent the other world. Low-temperature, lead-glazed vessels like this, probably serving ritual purposes, were important in funerary practice.
Glazed ceramic models such as this jar were placed in tombs to serve the dead in the afterlife, alongside figurines of servants, soldiers, models associated with daily use like house and stove (displayed in this exhibition), pigs, dogs, and horses, as well as agricultural tools. This was a popular practice in the Han dynasty (25-220 CE).
