Pilier

Anonyme

This pillar is the latest piece to enrich the museum’s collection of stamped bricks and pillars, precious traces of the tombs built in the Han period.
This pillar, bearing extremely lively motifs, features a taotie mask on the upper section of the front side. The four sides are decorated with the various customary themes found on this type of brick, such as chariots, dragons, felines pursued by horsemen shooting arrows, pavilions, servants, lanceolate trees and so on. Chariots and horsemen are also depicted on a Western Han brick found in Yu district in Henan province. Chariots, servants bringing dishes for a banquet, and stylised trees appear on two bricks also dating from the Western Han period from the Lucie Maud Buckingham Collection, today in the Art Institute of Chicago. The hunting scene evokes a similar one on a tile found in Lintong, Shaanxi.