Dog-shaped Paperweight (676–935): Art, History and Details

Dog-shaped Paperweight (676–935) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This small object in the shape of a hybrid dog-lion is believed to have been used as a paperweight. Since the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC−668), mercury amalgam gilding had been widely employed to embellish metal objects as well as to make their surface resistant to acids. This technique involves mixing pure gold powder with liquid mercury to form a paste-like mixture. As heat is applied, the mercury evaporates, but an opaque layer of gold remains on the surface. This coating must be polished by first rubbing it with dried rice seedlings, then processing it in ash lye to eliminate impurities; next, the piece is washed and rinsed in a plum vinegar bath.

Object facts

• Title: Dog-shaped Paperweight
• Date: 676–935
• Culture: Korea, Unified Silla period (676–935)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: gilt bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 5 x 2.7 cm (1 15/16 x 1 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1987.160

A detail from the museum

This is a dog and lion hybrid.

Collection credit

Gift of Robert H. Ellsworth in honor of Sherman E. Lee

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1987.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 75, no. 2, 1988, pp. 30–71.
• Lee, Soyoung, and Denise Patry Leidy. Silla: Korea's Golden Kingdom. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013.
• Nelson, Sarah. Gyeongju: The Capital of Golden Silla. Routledge, 2019.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.