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

Relief with Tiger 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:

This pottery panel and 1925.137 were made in molds to be joined with other panels to build a miniature stove. The panels, however, are not complete and presumably do not belong together. This panel depicts a tiger protecting the west.

Object facts

• Title: Relief with Tiger 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: 10.2 x 27.4 x 1.5 cm (4 x 10 13/16 x 9/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Han Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1925.140

A detail from the museum

Han dynasty tombs were often furnished with grave goods to provide the deceased with items for the afterlife.

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.
• 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.