Page 27 - Chiense Silver and Gold, 2012, J.J. Lally, New York

8. A P arcel-Gilt Silver S temcup
A.D. 6th–7th Century

the deep bowl decorated with sixteen petal-flutes with half-round raised borders radiating up from
the base of the bowl to a narrow band of squared beads and a border of pairs of inverted horizontal
‘C’-scroll motifs in relief below the slightly flaring lip, and with the same fluting and decorative
borders repeated in reverse on the sloping sides of the tall hollow foot and around the spreading
base, the recessed areas of the decoration and the rim of the bowl and the footrim all gilded, the
interior with a small medallion enclosing a florette with eight gilded petals, the surface with lightly
encrusted green patination from burial.
Height 3 ⁄8 inches (9.2 cm)
5
No other relief-decorated silver stemcup of this distinctive design appears to have been previously recorded, but two small
plain stemcups of similar form, regarded by Chinese scholars as foreign luxury goods imported into China from Mongolia
or Central Asia, one gold and the other silver, were discovered in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, in the tomb of the Sui dynasty
princess Li Jingxun who died in A.D. 608. The gold stemcup is illustrated by Watt in China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200–750
AD, New York, 2004, p. 294, no. 186, and both stemcups are illustrated in Tang Chang’an cheng jiao Sui Tang mu (Excavations
of the Sui and Tang Tombs at Xi’an), Beijing, 1980, pl. XI, fig.s 1 and 8.
A plain gold stemcup of similar form and slightly larger than the present example, included in an exhibition from China
which toured Japan, is illustrated in the catalogue Chūgoku Naimōko—hoppō kiba minzoku bunbutsu ten (Chinese Inner
Mongolia—Art of the Horseman of the North), Tokyo, 1983, p. 70, no. 68, attributed to the Tang dynasty.
The ‘C’-shaped motifs in rounded relief on this stemcup are closely related to the relief designs on an Iranian silver vase in
the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated by Demange in Glass, Gilding, & Grand Design: Art of Sasanian
Iran (224–642), New York, 2007, p. 45, no. 12, attributed to the 8th Century.
Most scholars accept the traditional view that the stemcup vessel form was introduced to China by ‘Silk Route’ traders
bringing stemcups from Sasanian Iran or Sogdiana, as outlined by Qi in Tang dai jinyinqi yanjiu (Research on Tang Gold and
Silver), Beijing, 1999, p. 408, but the Japanese scholar Kuwayama Shōshin, quoted by Qi, loc. cit., has proposed an alternative
source in ‘A Chronology of Tang Gold and Silver Excavated since 1956,’ Shilin, Vol. 61, No. 6, 1977, noting that stem cups
were a prevalent form in Byzantium in the 4th–5th century, and Byzantine stemcups also may have been brought to China
by ‘Silk Route’ traders. A Byzantine gold stemcup decorated with elongated petal-flutes similar to those found on the
present example, excavated in 1912 from a 7th century hoard in the Steppe region north of the Black Sea, now in the

Hermitage Museum, illustrated in the catalogue of the travelling exhibition organized by the Tokyo National Museum,
Cultural Contacts between East and West in Antiquity and Middle Ages from USSR, Tokyo, 1985, no. 146, may give some
support to Kuwayama’s conjecture.

六至七世紀 鎏金銀高足杯 高 9.2 厘米