Descrizione
Description: Chinese front part of a goutou eave-end pottery roof tile. It bears a molded five claws dragon, flying among clouds. The tile could belonging from an Imperial Palace, most probably Nanjing. It is in fact known that the Míng Gùgōng (明故宫), Nanjing’s Imperial Palace built in 1368 under the first Ming Emperor Hongwu, was destroyed and the Ming palace was gradually demolished, with stones and carvings taken away to be used as building material and decorative elements on other projects. But it could be earlier, as the style of the dragon of this tile is heavy, less elegant than the usually seen ones; we have found only a couple of similar dragons by searching on the net, see among the last pictures. Because of that, we think that the tile could even be of the earlier times (in “The Development of Roof Color in Ancient China” by Aiping Gou and Jiangbo Wang, it is said that yellow tiles was used well before than Ming dynasty) but unfortunately we are not aware of any publication related to these tiles, from which taking an indication of the time period related to the style of the molding. It could be worth to note that, compared with the two similar tiles found, the dragon on this tile is lacking the whiskers, which could be a further indication of an earlier dating.
At a certain point in its life, the tile was “treasured” by inserting it in a nice wood assembly, as a sort of small table. The upper part, that is holding the tile, is made of some type of hardwood, while the carved sides and legs are made of heavy boxwood, divided in four panels finely carved with confronting dragons chasing the flaming pearl. The legs have a carved mask at the top and are shaped as dragon legs ending with five clawed paws grasping the pearl. A masterpiece of old carving, that should further testimony that this type of tile should be of early type, deserving such “treasuring”. We can’t say that for sure, but not having the tile/wood assembly a practical function, we are not excluding that it could have been intended as an object of appreciation for the Literati’s desk. The last picture is showing this tile compared to our dishui Ming tile T1; the yellows are different, that of the tile T1 has a brownish/reddish tone.
Dating: 14th / 15th century, Ming dynasty or earlier
Size: The tile has a diameter of 15 cm, the wood holder has a max width of 22 cm and is 13 cm tall.
Provenance: Antiquarian market.
References: See, in the last pictures: our tile (on the right) compared with the two ones that we have found with similar dragon, and a page taken from “Ming, the Golden Empire” the catalog of an exhibition held at the National Museum of Scotland, with similar tiles but with more elegant dragons.
Notes: Please see the Notes of our yellow glazed Ming tile T1.
Recensioni
Ancora non ci sono recensioni.