CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

at Dunhuang (Gansu province), a key point on the
Silk Road, depict bodhisattvas holding transparent
bowls. 1 In Buddhist reliquary deposits, it is not
uncommon for the innermost container, in which
the relic grains were actually held, to be a tiny glass
phial. The tomb of the young princess Li Jingxun
(see cat. 157) contained a transparent green glass
bottle, 16.3 centimeters high, and several other small
glass vessels. Such depictions and finds clearly indicate
the rarity and high esteem in which glass was
held, despite — or perhaps because of—the very
small quantities actually produced in China.
Some vessels were imported from the west by
sea. The first reference in Chinese sources to Islamic
glass dates to 775 CE, when Lu Sigong, the
commissioner of Lingnan, having put down a rebellion
in Canton, sent a glass dish, 9 cun (inches) in
diameter, to Emperor Daizong. The emperor's delight
turned to rage when it was later discovered
that Lu had given a slightly larger glass dish, i chi
(10 cun, or inches) in diameter, to a disgraced
official, and the emperor was with difficulty
restrained from having Lu executed. 2
Under such circumstances, the group of glass
vessels from the Famen Monastery deposit is truly
remarkable in view of the number of vessels found,
their decoration, and their excellent state of preservation.
Retrieved from the innermost chamber, 3 on
4-6 May 1987, they comprise some twenty vessels,
nineteen of them intact (not all have yet been fully
described 4 ). Two of vessels — a plain, yellow-green
teacup (height 4.9 centimeters, diam. 13 centimeters)
and stand (height 3.7 centimeters, diam. 14
centimeters) — are of Chinese manufacture; the
remainder are imported Mesopotamian Islamic
glass, possibly made in Nishapur and brought to
the Chinese court by one of the many foreign tribute
missions during the Tang dynasty. One dish is
luster-painted in yellow and dark brown. 5
The dish in this exhibition 6 is one of six engraved
and four plain blue dishes in a stack of ten
dishes nested together, which doubtless helped to
keep them intact. Convex at the center (a function
of its attachment to the pontil during the blowing),
the dish is decorated with gilding and engraving.
The gilding is applied in two concentric narrow
bands that circumscribe the central and main fields
of decoration; a third wavy band or ribbon undulates
in the space between them. One other dish
has both gilding and engraving, while the remaining
four blue dishes are engraved but not gilt; all
six, however, use similar incising techniques and in
some cases the same motifs; the central motif of
eight principal petals on this piece, for example,
reappears on another of the engraved dishes, 7 but
on a larger scale so that it fills almost the whole of
the available space within the plain rim. Several of
the dishes feature a five-leaflet motif; all of them
use close-set hatching lines, straight or undulating
(as here, within the small roundels inside and outside
the gilded undulating band), with contrasting
areas of plain blue reserve. The same hatching
techniques and, less frequently, gilding appear on
vessel fragments found in Samarra, in Nishapur, and
in al-Fustat, Egypt. 8 RW
1 Moore 1998, fig. 19.6, following a survey by An Jiayao,
illustrates her line drawings of a number of examples from
the mural paintings in Cave 217 and other Tang caves at
Dunhuang.
2 Ma Wenkuan 1994, 233 - 234, citing the Xin Tang shu (New
Tang history). Moore 1998, 80, gives further details from
the Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive mirror to aid government),
with the date as 778.
3 Most of them were in the southwest corner of the chamber,
close to the tea-mill and the two tea-baskets.
4 A fragment of a narrow-necked blue bottle (FD 5: 33), and
a fragment of a pale yellow straight-sided cup (FD 5: 37)
have been analyzed, see An 1993, 262. The analysis shows
them to be common sodium glass with relatively high
levels of magnesium oxide and oxide of potassium, similar
to sherds from Nishapur analyzed by Brill and Fenn 1993.
5 See Kroger 1998.
6 Excavated in 1987 (FD 5:012). The dishes are not individually
reported, but see generally Shaanxi 19883,1-26, and,
for additional illustration, An 1990,127, fig. 6.
7 FD 5:008. See An 1990,126, fig. 4.
8 Some of these fragments are illustrated in Brill and Fenn
1993, 259-260, figs. 1-8.
485FAMEN MONASTERY AT FUFENC