Footed Platter with Design of Mythical Beasts amid Grapevines (700s): Art, History and Details

Footed Platter with Design of Mythical Beasts amid Grapevines (700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Precious Sassanian and Central Asian metalwork had been imported to China as early as the 4th and 5th centuries as a result of wars and prosperous trade along the Silk Road. With the influx of foreign metalworkers to cosmopolitan Tang China, the techniques of sheet metalworking were introduced to the Chinese. This silver vessel demonstrates the effects of such east-west exchanges along the Silk Road. Its decoration with intricate gilt, incised and chased designs against a ring-punched ground is of a particularly high standard.

Object facts

• Title: Footed Platter with Design of Mythical Beasts amid Grapevines
• Date: 700s
• Culture: China, Tang dynasty (618–907)
• Type: Silver
• Technique: silver with gilt, incised, and chased decoration
• Dimensions: Diameter: 4.8 x 30.5 cm (1 7/8 x 12 in.)
• Collection: China - Tang Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1972.39

A detail from the museum

The footed tray, a foreign shape, is decorated with fantastic creatures frolicking among grapevines, a motif borrowed from Roman art.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gyllensvärd, Bo. "T'ang, Gold and Silver," Bulletin, Östasiatiska samlingarna (Stockholm, Sweden) no. 29 (1957).
• Sotheby's, London. The D. David-Weill Collection; early Chinese bronzes; inlaid metalwork, gilt bronzes and silver; jades; sculpture and ceramics. 29 February 1972 sale.
• Ma, John K. T. "Saleroom News," Arts of Asia 2/3 (May-June 1972), p. 55.

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.