Han Dynasty Cocoon Jar with Cloud Designs, China

Description

Unglazed pottery cocoon jars were used in the Han dynasty as mingqi ancestral items to place in tombs to revere, honor and comfort the deceased and fulfill Chinese duties of filial piety.

Wheel made with seamless joined parts to form their thin-walled ovoid shape, they were designed to resemble a silkworm’s cocoon. The silk industry was so significant in amassing wealth through international trade that its influence impacted even Chinese Taoist and Confucian beliefs. Alchemists examined silkworms’ metamorphoses and concluded that mulberry leaves that produced their transformation would also have life-prolonging properties; thus, ingesting liquids from leaves or ashes could also extend life indefinitely. The mulberry concoction soon became accepted as an elixir for immortality. Jars were deigned their reflect importance of silkworms in their cocoon shape, patterns and contents.

Ovoid in shape to resemble a silkworm cocoon and resting on a small trumpet-shaped foot, this bulbous cocoon jar has a narrow neck and a wide lip jutting outward at the mouth. Made with fine grained gray clay, it has a hard body as it was fired it over 1000 degrees centigrade. It is decorated with vertical bands painted after firing dividing the body into vertical panels, swirling cloud scrolls (yun wen), and circular “eye” motifs at each end. It was thrown on a wheel in parts and seamlessly joined to form this unusual shape. First produced in the late Warring States Period (480-221 BC), cocoon jars reached their peak in the Western Han (206BC-24AD). Produced for burial with the deceased (mingqi), cocoon jars were have a ritual rather than utilitarian purpose. Families placed cocoon jars with auspicious designs containing magical mixtures of mulberry leaves in tombs for the souls of the departed to drink for a transformative afterlife.

The clouds scroll were to evoke a state free from time and earthly limits with full access to the otherworld. These concepts were seen in Han poetry of the afterlife in which departed souls could soar upward to the realm of the immortals in “cloud chariots”. Painted after firing its vertical bands divide the jar into panels, swirling cloud scrolls and circular “eye” motifs at each end.