Page 155 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

166 Octagonal wine cup Beaten silver
with traced and reliefdecoration in gilt.
Excavated at Ho-chia-ts'un. Sian. T'ang
Dynasty, eighth century.

But if all of it were put together it would not give the over-
whelming impression of the splendour and refinement of T'ang
decorative art that we get from one single collection in Japan. In
756 the empress Koken dedicated to the great Buddha of Todaiji
at Nara the treasures her deceased husband Shomu had collected in
his lifetime. These and other objects were put in a treasury, called
the Shosoin, in which they have survived virtually intact until this
day. This remarkable collection contains furniture, musical in-
struments, and gaming boards painted, lacquered, or inlaid with
floral and animal designs in mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, gold,
and silver; there are glass vessels from the Arab world, silver plat-
ters, jugs and ewers, mirrors, silk brocades, weapons, pottery,
maps, paintings, and calligraphy. What is astonishing about this
collection is the triumphant confidence with which the Chinese
craftsman—assuming most of these pieces to be of Chinese ori-
gin, or copies of Chinese work—has mastered foreign forms and
techniques. This is particularly true of the art of the goldsmith and
silversmith, which came into its own in the T'ang Dynasty. Hith-
erto, silverwork had been largely dominated by bronze design,
but under Near Eastern influence it was emancipated. Some silver
vessels, such as the two huge bowls in the Shosoin, were cast, but
precious metals were scarce, and a massive appearance was often
gained with little material by soldering thin sheets together to
form the outer and inner surface, which also made it possible to
trace designs in the metal, both outside and inside. Many of the
shapes such as the stem cup, foliated bowl, and flat platter with an-
imal designs in repousse, and the octagonal cup illustrated here,
are of Persian origin; the decoration, applied with a typically
T'ang combination of lavishncss and delicacy, includes animals