- Informal Coat, China, Manchu, 1880’s. Silk, metallic-wrapped yarns, buttons, metal; satin weave, embroidered. L: 25.5 inches, W: 58.5 inches. TM 1972.24.2. Gift of Alice L.C. Dodge.
Yungang “Cloud Ridge” Temple In Datong, the first Capital of the Northern Wei. At this site, more than 50 main caves were carved out of sandstone in the cliffs. At cave 20 is a colossal Buddha with attendant Buddha (Possibly Maitreya). Although he appears to be seated in a niche, he was originally in a cave that has since worn away. This Buddha represents the mesh of Indian and Chinese styles called Archaic Style. This Buddha is smiling, with his lips closed and turned up slightly in the corner. The interior caves are covered with relieved walls with sculptures of Buddhas of varying sizes. Many families (Especially of the upper class) commissioned shrines and reliefs.
Ancient Chinese pottery horse, Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618 - 907), excavated at Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, 1957.
This yellow-glazed pottery horse includes a carefully sculpted saddle, which is decorated with leather straps and ornamental fastenings featuring eight-petalled flowers and apricot leaves.
Photo taken by Editor at Large at the Treasures of Ancient China exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
A Chinese coin about 600 years old was recently unearthed on an island just off the coast of Kenya. If it proves to be authentic, the coin could show that the Chinese explorer Zheng He — like a Christopher Columbus of the East — came to this part of east Africa.
“This finding is significant. We know Africa has always been connected to the rest of the world, but this coin opens a discussion about the relationship between China and Indian Ocean nations,” archaeologist Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum in Chicago said in a statement.
The copper and silver disk has a square hole in the center, possibly to be worn on a belt. Read more.
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Ancient Chinese Gilt Bronze Human-Shaped Lamp, made in the Western Han Dynasty, dated 172 BC.
Historian Patricia Buckley Ebrey, on page 66 of her Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1999), has this to say of the Han antique lamp:
Gilt bronze figure of a maidservant holding an oil-lamp, almost 19 inches tall, excavated from the tomb of Dou Wan, wife of one of Emperor Wu’s brothers [i.e. Prince Liu Sheng], at Mancheng in Hebei province. This elegant gilded bronze lamp was cleverly designed to allow adjustments in the directness and brightness of the light and to trap smoke in the body.
It was one of the nearly 3,000 objects of bronze, iron, gold, silver, jade, pottery, lacquer, and silk from this huge tomb that testify to the luxury and refinement of palace life.
On page 100 of his book Han Civilization (1982), archaeologist and historian Wang Zhongshu states this about the lamp found in Dou Wan’s tomb:
The best-known item among them in the Mancheng find was the Changxin Palace lamp, gilded with bright gold, in the form of a kneeling palace maid holding the lamp in her hands. Not only was the palace maid beautifully sculptured, the lamp and its cover were cleverly designed so that both the lamp’s illuminating power and the direction of its rays were (and still are) adjustable. Since the smoke was absorbed into the body of the maid through her arms, it was in fact an antipollution design.
Courtesy & currently located at the Hubei Provincial Museum, China. Photo taken by Shizhao](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ChangXingongdeng.jpg)
Ancient Chinese Gilt Bronze Human-Shaped Lamp, made in the Western Han Dynasty, dated 172 BC.
Historian Patricia Buckley Ebrey, on page 66 of her Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1999), has this to say of the Han antique lamp:
Gilt bronze figure of a maidservant holding an oil-lamp, almost 19 inches tall, excavated from the tomb of Dou Wan, wife of one of Emperor Wu’s brothers [i.e. Prince Liu Sheng], at Mancheng in Hebei province. This elegant gilded bronze lamp was cleverly designed to allow adjustments in the directness and brightness of the light and to trap smoke in the body.
It was one of the nearly 3,000 objects of bronze, iron, gold, silver, jade, pottery, lacquer, and silk from this huge tomb that testify to the luxury and refinement of palace life.
On page 100 of his book Han Civilization (1982), archaeologist and historian Wang Zhongshu states this about the lamp found in Dou Wan’s tomb:
The best-known item among them in the Mancheng find was the Changxin Palace lamp, gilded with bright gold, in the form of a kneeling palace maid holding the lamp in her hands. Not only was the palace maid beautifully sculptured, the lamp and its cover were cleverly designed so that both the lamp’s illuminating power and the direction of its rays were (and still are) adjustable. Since the smoke was absorbed into the body of the maid through her arms, it was in fact an antipollution design.
Courtesy & currently located at the Hubei Provincial Museum, China. Photo taken by Shizhao
The only surviving calligraphy in Li Bai’s own handwriting, titled Shangyangtai (Going Up To Sun Terrace), located at the Palace Museum in Beijing, China.
(via asianhistory)
