A large impressed grey pottery tomb brick, Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25-220). © Christie's Image 2003

Perhaps part of a door lintel, hollow and impressed with descending registers of long-tailed birds, trees, dragons and immortals (xian) and tigers running amidst mountains on the long sides, and dragons on top, the bottom with a lozenge band between bands of cloud scroll, with apertures on the narrow sides and a rectangular tenon on top - 25 3/8in. (64.5cm.) long, stand - Lot 194. Estimate $4,000 - $6,000. Price Realized $3,585 

Notes: For a hollow tomb brick impressed with a row of similar trees in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco see He Li,Chinese Ceramics: A New Comprehensive Survey, New York, 1996, p. 72, no. 58. 

CHRISTIE'S. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 18 September 2003, New York, Rockefeller Plaza