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Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

100–200 CE
(202 BCE–220 CE)
earthenware, die-stamped relief
Overall: 113.7 x 18.4 cm (44 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King 1915.68
Location: not on view
Public Domain
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Description

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 AD, 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.
Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway

100–200 CE

China, Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)

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