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BOX 5038
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All auctions / Asian Art / Chinese Tang Dynasty Grayware Musician Figure - Kneeling Wind Player
East Asia, China, Tang Dynasty. A kneeling musician rendered in unglazed gray earthenware, caught mid-performance with both hands raised to the lips and a wind instrument, perhaps a flute or panpipe, pressed to the mouth. The modeling is economical yet assured: a topknot or bound coiffure crowns a softly rounded face, the eyes lowered in concentration, while the robe falls in incised pleats that fan across the splayed base. Traces of slip and earthen encrustation cling to the surface, lending the gray clay a weathered patina. Such figures belonged to the mingqi tradition, ceramic surrogates buried with the dead to furnish the tomb with the pleasures of the living. A musician ensured that courtly entertainment would accompany the deceased into the afterlife, a small clay performer playing on for eternity. Tomb figures of musicians and dancers proliferated under the Tang, when an outward-looking court absorbed melodies and instruments along the Silk Road from Central Asia, Persia, and beyond. Ensembles of such mingqi, sometimes whole orchestras, were arrayed in elite burials to recreate the banquets and performances of aristocratic life. Their survival offers a rare window onto the soundscape of medieval China, preserving in clay the postures of players whose music is otherwise lost. Item # 202960
Estimate:$175
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorAsian Art
Estimate:
$175
Royal Crown Derby Gilt Cobalt Bone China Ewer, Late 19th/Early 20th Century
09/28/2026
$251
Est: $153
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