Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway (100–200 CE): Art, History and Details

Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway (100–200 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

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.

Object facts

• Title: Hollow Tile: Column from Tomb-Chamber Doorway
• Date: 100–200 CE
• Culture: China, Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware, die-stamped relief
• Dimensions: Overall: 112.4 x 19 cm (44 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.)
• Collection: China - Han Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1915.66

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King

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.