Made during the Tang dynasty (618–907) for a client of elevated stature, perhaps even for a member of the imperial court, these handsome vessels of hammered silver—a bowl and a dish—were formerly a part of the famous collection assembled by renowned Swedish collector Carl Kempe (1884–1967) and thus claim a distinguished, even enviable, provenance. The vessels were ultimately inspired by luxury goods crafted in precious metals that were reaching Chang’an (modern Xi’an), the Tang capital, from ancient Iran via the fabled Silk Route, those imported Iranian goods themselves inspired by gold and silver vessels crafted in ancient Rome.

The side walls of this exquisite silver “animals bowl” are gently rounded, flaring subtly outward to form the lip and curving inward to shape the flat base. Engraved and punched decoration covers the exterior of the bowl; the interior, like the base, is unembellished (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Line drawing of the silver bowl, lot 709. After Han Wei, Hai nei wai Tangdai jin yin qi cuibian [Tang Gold and Silver in Chinese and Overseas Collections], Xi’an, 1989, pl. 121.

Four tiers of recurring, heart-shaped medallions—Chinese authors term them “peach shaped”—encircle the bowl’s exterior, the tier around the midsection being the most prominent. Immediately below the plain, narrow lip, a lissome floral scroll borders the decorative scheme at the top, a narrow band of double, stylized blossoms separating it from the uppermost tier of decoration; a bird-in-flight appears between each pair of double blossoms. Tucked within each heart-shaped medallion a long-tailed quadruped strides toward the viewer’s left; most of the animals are recognizable and include a camel and an elephant, along with boars, foxes, and wolves, among others. Such decoration recalls—and was possibly inspired by—the inhabited vine scrolls that were popular in the arts of ancient Rome and that were transmitted along the Silk Route. The decoration, all of which appears against a punched, ring-mat ground—typically called a “fish-roe pattern” or “pearl ground” in Chinese—is so refined and meticulously finished that it is difficult to determine whether it was engraved or chased. A liner covers the bowl’s interior, affording a smooth, even surface.

Although most Tang silver bowls—which admittedly are few in number—have an S-curved profile, a slightly flaring lip, and a short footring, whether straight or splayed, this rare bowl has vertical side walls and a flat base. It finds kinship in several similarly shaped bowls with vertical walls, plain lip, and flat base, if with different decorative schemes, including one excavated at Hejiacun and two in the collection of the Hakutsuru Museum of Fine Art, Kōbe, Japan. The Hejiacun bowl formed part of the famous hoard of gold and silver vessels discovered in October 1970 at Hejiacun, in the southern part of modern Xi’an, in Shaanxi province.1 In the analysis of shapes section of his 1999 Research on Tang Gold and Silver, Peking University Professor Qi Dongfang, who is a renowned authority on Chinese gold and silver, illustrates and discusses Tang silver bowls with round and flat bottoms, including the present example, the Hejiacun bowl, and the Hakutsuru bowls.2 Now in the collection of the Shaanxi History Museum, Xian, a bowl of similar shape, also with engraved decoration and ring-mat ground but with a splayed footring, was also recovered in the Hejiacun excavations. The bowl of related shape but with engraved and punched decoration in the collection of Pierre Uldry3 is deeper and, like the Hejiacun bowl, has a footring. 

The decoration on this bowl shows kinship to that of other Tang-dynasty bowls from the late seventh and early eighth century in both subject matter and technique of decoration. Representative of the very finest, Tang-dynasty craftsmanship, the gold and silver vessels from the Hejiacun hoard are believed to have been made in workshops in the Xinghua Square area of ancient Chang’an (i.e., in the same general area where the Hejiacun cache was found). The present bowl’s similarity to ones excavated at Hejiacun confirms its Tang-dynasty origins and suggests that it might have been produced either in one of those Xinghua Square workshops or in one closely allied with them.

This bowl was shaped from a single piece of silver hammered into shape over a matrix, probably of wood. The decorative motifs were either engraved or chased on the exterior, after which the background areas were punched to create the ring-matted ground. The interior was then lined with a second sheet of hammered silver to provide a smooth, even surface and conceal from view the uneven surfaces created by the designs executed on the exterior. The upper edge of the liner was then folded over the bowl’s thin lip and hammered into place.4 Close inspection of the bowl reveals that the outer rim was then covered with narrow strips of silver, expertly concealing the fold-over join between the liner and the exterior of the bowl.

The second vessel considered here is the parcel-gilt silver dish emblazoned on its floor with repoussé decoration of a rhinoceros standing foursquare, facing the viewer’s left, and bearing on its back three stylized blossoms displayed in a lotiform stand. The walls of this relatively shallow “rhinoceros dish” expand outward in a gentle S-curve, terminating in a lightly everted lip. A raised bowstring line encircles the floor’s central medallion, while a pair of raised bowstring lines accentuates the dish’s lip. Like the rhinoceros, the bowstring lines are gilt. The exterior of the dish is plain. A short, vertical footring circumscribes the flat base, which, though undecorated, includes an intaglio impression, or echo, of the repoussé rhinoceros design on the dish’s interior. 

Tang silver dishes of this shape are rare; even so, another, virtually identical—though significantly tarnished—parcel-gilt silver dish with decoration of a rhinoceros bearing flowers but with the rhinoceros facing the viewer’s right—i.e., a “mirror image” of the present dish—was also formerly in the Kempe collection, was presumably was a pair to the present dish, and is illustrated in Giuseppe Eskenazi’s A Dealer’s Hand (Plate 79).5 A gold dish or basin excavated in 1970 at the Hejiacun site and now in the Shaanxi History Museum claims a similar shape but is undecorated and lacks a footring.6

Its stout body divided into three parts and covered with scales, the rhinoceros is shown with two horns, a long tail, and four short legs with three toes on each foot. Though stylized, the representation accurately captures the form and bulk of the rhinoceros. Although some of the scales that cover the beast’s body are rounded, most are trefoil in shape and recall the form of clouds in Tang paintings and other arts.

Both archaeological and literary evidence attest that rhinoceroses lived in China, even in northern China, in early times.7 Due to over-hunting the rhinoceros had become extinct in northern China by Tang times but was still known in parts of southern China. Exotic animals were typically offered to the Chinese emperor as tribute by foreign states, nations in Southeast Asia often presenting rhinoceros horns and hides as gifts and occasionally presenting live animals, as well, which were kept in imperial parks in the capital.8