THREE STRAW-GLAZED POTTERY FIGURES OF FEMALE MUSICIANS

EARLY TANG DYNASTY, 7TH CENTURY

Details

THREE STRAW-GLAZED POTTERY FIGURES OF FEMALE MUSICIANS
EARLY TANG DYNASTY, 7TH CENTURY
All shown seated atop a square base and wearing a short-sleeved jacket over a sash-tied long dress, their hair dressed in a tall wing-like hairdo, one playing the panpipe (pai xiao), another a pipa and the third a sheng, all covered with a translucent straw glaze of greenish-yellow tone
7½ in. (19 cm.) high (3)

Provenance

Sotheby's, London, 27 March 1962, lot 22.
Collection of the Late Mildred R. and Rafi Y. Mottahedeh; Sotheby's, New York, 20 September 20, 2000, lot 80 (part).

Exhibited

Copenhagen, Kunst Industri Museet, 1950, Catalogue, no. 290.

Lot Essay

These three musicians illustrate the popularity not only of foreign dress during the Tang period, but of the taste for the music and instruments of Central Asia, particularly Sogdiana and Kucha, said to have been introduced to the court by the Turkic wife of Emperor Wudi (r. 561-78). Compare a group of dancers and musicians in the Royal Ontario Museum illustrated in Homage to Heaven, Homage to Earth, Toronto, 1992, p. 148, no. 85.

The result of Oxford Authentication Ltd. thermoluminescence test no. C200d28 is consistent with the dating of this lot.

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