Footed Platter with Design of Mythical Beasts amid Grapevines

700s

China, Tang dynasty

(618–907)

Medium

silver with gilt, incised, and chased decoration

Measurements

Diameter: 4.8 x 30.5 cm (1 7/8 x 12 in.)

Credit Line

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund 1972.39

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Location

239 Chinese Ceramics and Metalwork

Did You Know?

The footed tray, a foreign shape, is decorated with fantastic creatures frolicking among grapevines, a motif borrowed from Roman art.

Description

Precious Sassanian and Central Asian metalwork had been imported to China as early as the 4th and 5th centuries as a result of wars and prosperous trade along the Silk Road. With the influx of foreign metalworkers to cosmopolitan Tang China, the techniques of sheet metalworking were introduced to the Chinese. This silver vessel demonstrates the effects of such east-west exchanges along the Silk Road. Its decoration with intricate gilt, incised and chased designs against a ring-punched ground is of a particularly high standard.