Relief with Dragon from a Funerary Stove Model (202 BCE–220 CE): Art, History and Details

Relief with Dragon from a Funerary Stove Model (202 BCE–220 CE) 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. This panel with a dragon was part of a miniature pottery stove to be placed in a burial chamber. The dragon is an auspicious creature and an animal of the cardinal directions that protects the east.

Object facts

• Title: Relief with Dragon from a Funerary Stove Model
• Date: 202 BCE–220 CE
• Culture: China, from a tomb in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware with relief decoration
• Dimensions: Overall: 10 x 27.7 x 1.4 cm (3 15/16 x 10 7/8 x 9/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Han Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1925.138

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.
• Cox, Warren E. The Book of Pottery and Porcelain. New York: L. Lee and Shepard Co.; distributed by Crown Publishers, 1944.
• 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.