Cleveland Museum of Art

Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

Date

100–200 CE

Medium

earthenware, die-stamped relief

Culture

China, Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Striding tigers (top), racing horsemen (right column), and reverent officials (left column) are stamped into the surface of this underground portal to a tomb. The doorway preserves in stone the post-and-lintel structure, a basic element of Chinese wooden architecture. By the first century CE, a revolution in Chinese tomb construction and furnishing had taken place. Tombs lined with decorated bricks and tiles replace the earlier tombs constructed with only rammed-earth walls. Ceramic surrogates or models of stoves, houses, servants, and pets filled these more durable chambers, symbolically extending the creature comforts of this world into the world after death.

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