The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 25, 2024

Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

100–200 CE
(202 BCE–220 CE)
earthenware, die-stamped relief
Overall: 112.4 x 19 cm (44 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King 1915.66
Location: not on view

Description

Striding tigers (top), racing horsemen (right column), and reverent officials (left column) are stamped into the surface of this underground portal to a tomb. The doorway preserves in stone the post-and-lintel structure, a basic element of Chinese wooden architecture.

By the first century CE, a revolution in Chinese tomb construction and furnishing had taken place. Tombs lined with decorated bricks and tiles replace the earlier tombs constructed with only rammed-earth walls. Ceramic surrogates or models of stoves, houses, servants, and pets filled these more durable chambers, symbolically extending the creature comforts of this world into the world after death.
  • ?–1915
    Ralph King [1855–1926] and Fanny Tewksbury King [1867–1949], Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1915–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Inaugural Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (June 6-September 20, 1916).
  • {{cite web|title=Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway|url=false|author=|year=100–200 CE|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1915.66