Lots of wonders in the online collection of the Cleveland Museum, not so many big or spectualr objects but just the kind of weirdness I enjoy. Above, an earthenware model watchtower from an Eastern Han tomb. c. 100 AD.
Statuette of a kneeling woman, Han Dynasty.
Funerary Urn, c. 300AD, and detail.
Detail of a similar urn.
The museum has a lot of these objects; this one is
glossed like this:
Han dynasty tombs were often furnished with grave goods to provide the deceased with items for the afterlife. This panel with a dragon was part of a miniature pottery stove to be placed in a burial chamber. This scene of a dragon being fed Lingzhi fungus by a winged fairy is molded on the panel. The dragon is an auspicious creature and an animal of the cardinal directions that protects the east.
This "fairy" would presumably one of the Yuren, the "winged furry beings" who flitted about on the border between life and death. Lingzhi is the hallucinogetic "mushroom of immortality" revered across Asia. Is feeding hallucinogens to dragons really a good idea? I guess the immortal can afford such experiments, but I would caution mortals against trying this.
More cookstove panels. And to think that until today I knew nothing about the amazing world of carved panels from toy Han dynasty cookstoves.
Bronze dragon tripod, c. 50 AD.
Chimeric tomb guardian of the type sometimes called "Bixie," 300s AD.
Jars in the shape of owls, Han dynasty.
The museum has many of these bronze mirrors, an important item in Chinese noble society for 3,000 years. Mirrors were believed to retain something of the essence of those who gazed into them, so if you had an ancient family mirror it became part of the cult of your ancestors. This one has Daoist themes, and this delightful chariot.
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