TANG DYNASTY (AD 618-907)

Plain silver stem cups of this shape appear to be quite rare. Another plain silver cup of this shape is illustrated in Sui to no bijutsu, Osaka Municipal Art Museum, 1976, no. 2-21. Plain silver vessels of other shapes and of Tang-dynasty date have also been published including a cylindrical cup with ring handle found with a group of fifteen silver objects near the village of Shapo, southeast of the Tang capital of Chang'an, and now in the Shaanxi History Museum, illustrated by Li Jian, ed., The Glory of the Silk Road: Art from Ancient China, The Dayton Art Institute, 2003, p. 197, no. 106. Two other small plain silver vessels in the Shaanxi History Museum, of Tang date, excavated in 1970, at Hejiacun, Xi'an, Shaanxi province, are illustrated by Carol Michaelson, Gilded Dragons, British Museum, 1999, pp. 114-15, no. 76, a jar and cover, and no. 77, a circular box and cover.