Panel from Model Cooking Stove: Raven Flanked by Snake-Entwined Tortoises (100–1 BCE): Art, History and Details

Panel from Model Cooking Stove: Raven Flanked by Snake-Entwined Tortoises (100–1 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Han dynasty tombs were often furnished with grave goods to provide the deceased with items for the afterlife. Four earthenware panels were made in molds and then joined together to make a miniature model of a stove, which was placed in a burial chamber. The four sides show the animals of the cardinal directions. Two snake-entwined turtles designate the north, and here flank an archway that simulates the opening for fueling the stove. Above the arch perches a raven, which is identified with the sun, perhaps depicted here to denote the heat issuing from the false opening.

Object facts

• Title: Panel from Model Cooking Stove: Raven Flanked by Snake-Entwined Tortoises
• Date: 100–1 BCE
• Culture: China, from a tomb in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–8 CE)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware with impressed relief decoration
• Dimensions: Overall: 12.4 x 18.2 x 1.7 cm (4 7/8 x 7 3/16 x 11/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Han Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1925.139

Collection credit

Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Whiting, Frederic Allen. “The Bequests of Mary Warden Harkness: A Tribute and an Accounting.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 15, no. 2, 1928, pp. 43–50.
• Janse, Olov and C.T. Loo. Briques et objets céramiques funéraires de l'époque des Han. Paris: Les Éditions d'art et d'histoire, 1936.
• Trubner, Henry. Chinese Ceramics from the Prehistoric Period Through Ch'ien Lung; A Loan Exhibition from Collections in America and Japan. March 14 to April 27, 1952. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum, 1952.

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.