The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 28, 2024

Hollow Tile:  Lintel from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

Hollow Tile: Lintel from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

100–200 CE
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.
  • Inaugural Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (June 6-September 20, 1916).
  • {{cite web|title=Hollow Tile: Lintel from Tomb-Chamber Doorway|url=false|author=|year=100–200 CE|access-date=28 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1915.69