CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

links the cover to the handle. Sides, lid, and even
the base of the piece all feature the same openwork
motif of intersecting circles, whose square holes
resemble those of Chinese coins. Superimposed on
the openwork are gilded flying geese (so identified
in the excavation report, although their short necks
suggest that they are in fact ducks), fifteen of them
on the lid, and another twenty-four in pairs around
the sides. A narrow gilded band of overlapping
petals and another of half-florets on a stippled fishroe
ground border the lid where it meets the sides.
Unlike the gold and silver vessels made at the
capital in the workshops of the Wensiyuan, this
piece came to the court as tribute from southwestern
China. A brief inscription is engraved around
the edge of the underside: "Sent [to the court] by
Li Can, official of Gui." 2 (Gui [for Guizhou, in
present-day Guangxi province] was the principal
commandery on the Lingnan western circuit during
the Tang dynasty.) An identically worded inscription
came to light when a hoard of Tang gold and silver
vessels was discovered in 1980 during field-leveling
at Lantian in Shaanxi province. 3 The inscription
was on the underside of a shallow dish with floral
designs, pairs of mandarin ducks, and thirty-four
geese or ducks flying in a narrow band around
the rim. A five-lobed box, found in the same hoard,
was inscribed as tribute to the inner court, with
the date of the seventh year of Xiantong (866),
only a few years before the openwork basket was
conveyed to the Famen Monastery deposit in 874.
Another basket from the Famen Monastery
deposit, listed on the inventory stele as a "knotted
basket," is of lobed oval form, similar in size and
incorporating the same ground-pattern of intersecting
circles, but even more fanciful, being entirely
constructed of silver and silver-gilt wire,
including even the swing handle. 4 Remains of wood
in the bottom of this second basket have suggested
to some commentators that both baskets were
intended to store tea, after the leaves had been
steamed and then dried into bricks or flat cakes,
which in more ordinary circumstances were often
strung together; 5 even today, solid cakes of tea
are made with a depression in the center, for ease
of piercing and stringing. RW
1 Excavated in 1987 (FD 5:077), reported: Shaanxi 19883,
16.
2 Han 1995, 71.
3 Fan 1982, figs. 2, 9.
4 Famensi 1988,12, fig. 12, item 36; Tokyo 1998!}, 172-173,
no. in.
5 Reischauer 1955, 365 n. 1395.
479 FAMEN MONASTERY AT FUFENC