Page 14 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

swelled to include even rulers and their families in the Central Plains, the
heartland of Bronze Age culture, the need disappeared even for the limited
number of bronze ritual vessel types inherited from the Han. The growth
of Buddhism, combined with ongoing religious and intellectual change,
thus closed the door on Bronze Age culture and its ritual vessels.
From Han through Tang, China witnessed ever increasing contact with
the outside world, most importantly through the influx of luxury goods via
the Silk Route. 8 As such goods became a part of daily life in wealthy and
aristocratic circles, new industries arose in China to supply the market, pro-
ducing, for example, gold and silver vessels. Potters quickly followed suit,
imitating silver vessels in the newly invented white porcelain and appropri-
ating decorative motifs from gold and silver pieces for their celadon wares.
Perhaps copied from silver or glass imports, a few Tang ceramics even reflect
influence from distant Greece and Rome. In addition, fabric designers readily
incorporated Persian motifs into their silks, and musicians assimilated the
p/pa, or lute, and other foreign instruments into their orchestras.
Playing on a long-dormant but deep-seated suspicion of things for-
eign, a faction at court sought political advantage by initiating a series of
persecutions against the Buddhist church in 845, confiscating property,
destroying temples, and returning monks and nuns to lay life. The move
ushered in a period of cultural self-examination that lasted well into the
Song and that sought to define Chinese culture by separating the native
from the foreign, always awarding pride of place to the native. As Buddhism
waned, Confucianism reasserted itself, with renewed philosophical inquiry
giving it the highly intellectualized framework that distinguishes it as Neo-
Confucianism. Native musical instruments, especially the qin - the ancient
zither that Confucius himself played - claimed primacy, relegating the p/pa
and other foreign instruments to professional entertainers. And on royal and
aristocratic tables, refined, monochrome-glazed ceramics became the pre-
ferred wares, displacing, even if not replacing, gold and silver.
Antiquity served as the standard in identifying and defining things
Chinese. Antiquarian interests fired an appreciation of Bronze Age antiq-
uities, leading to the formation of collections of ancient bronzes and jades.
Although works of painting and calligraphy had been collected at least since
the Han and although serendipitous finds of ancient bronzes had always been
considered auspicious, the systematic collecting of antiquities had to await
the genuine interest in antiquity that came in the early Northern Song.

14 C H I N A ' S R E N A I S S A N C E IN B R O N Z E