Page 68 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

Some, representing the creatures of the steppes singly or in mortal
combat, are almost purely "Ordos." Yet others arc in a mixed
style: a garment hook recently excavated at Hui-hsien, for exam-
ple, is decorated with three penannular jade rings in a setting
formed of two intertwined dragons in silver overlaid with gold.
The dragons are Chinese, but the sweeping angular planes in
which they arc modelled come from the northern steppes.
CERAMICS No such barbarian influences appear in the pottery of North
China at this time: the nomads, indeed, had little use for pottery
and no facilities for making it. The grey tradition continues, but
the coarse cord-marked wares of the early Chou are left behind.
Shapes become more elegant, often imitating bronze—the most
popular forms being the tsun, the three-legged ting, the tall cov-
ered ton ("stem-cup") and an egg-shaped, covered tui on three
feet. Generally they are heavy and plain, but some of those found
at Chin-ts*un bear animals and hunting scenes stamped or incised
with great verve in the wet clay before firing. Sometimes the pot-
ter even attempted to imitate the original metal by giving his ves-
sel a lustrous black surface or, more rarely, clothed it in tinfoil.
During the early 1940s, a group of miniature pottery vessels
and figurines, said to have come from late Chou tombs in the Hui-
hsien region, began to appear on the Peking antique market. Very
heavily potted and beautifully finished, the vessels included
miniature hu, covered fin,? and p 'an, and a garment hook and mir-
ror, on the burnished black surface of which the inlaid geometric
decoration of the Chin-ts'un bronzes was imitated in red pigment.
These are indications that many, ifnot all, of these pieces are mod-
ern forgeries, possibly inspired by the similar, though artistically
inferior, pottery figurines discovered in a tomb at Ch'ang-chih in
south Shansi, and by miniature pottery vessels unearthed in 1959
in a Warring States tomb at Ch'ang-p'ing near Peking, three of
61 Miniiturc vessels. Pottery painted 1
red and black. Excavated atC'h"ang-
which are illustrated on this page. 3
THE ARTS OF CH'U While what might be called the classical tradition was developing
in the Honan-Shensi region, a quite different style of art was ma-
turing in the large area of central China dominated by the state of
Ch'u. It is not known precisely how widely her boundaries ex-
tended (particularly in a southward direction), but they included
the city of Shou-chou on the Huai River in modern Anhui, while
the influence of the art of Ch'u can be traced in the bronzes of Hui-
hsien, Honan, and even northern Hopei. Until Ch'in rose menac-
ing in the west, Ch'u had been secure, and in the lush valleys of the
Yangtse and its tributaries had developed a rich culture in which
poetry and the visual arts flourished exceedingly. So vigorous, in-
deed, was Ch'u culture that even after Ch'in sacked the last Ch'u
capital, Shou-chou, in 223 B.C., it survived with no significant
change into the Western Han, which is why discussion of Ch'u art
is shared between this chapter and the next.
In the late sixth century b. c. , Shou-chou was still under the state
of Ts'ai. A grave of this period recently excavated in the district
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