Valuable Vessels II: Wine Cups Along the Silk Road

Hello everyone, my name is Fan Zhang, Professor of Practice in Asian Art at Tulane University. It is my great pleasure today to share with you my research on this silver cup that is now on view at the exhibition Buddha and Shiva, Dragon and Lotus, masterworks from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III Collection at Asian Society that is now hosted by NOMA. The topic of my talk today is wine cups along the Silk Road, transmission, materiality, and banquets. This silver cup is extremely small in size, measuring less than two inches in height and only two and a half inches in diameter. I hope you don't miss it when you visit the exhibition. It is placed in a case against the rear wall next to the exit of the gallery and not too far away from the triple color glazed sculpture of the seated lady. Despite of its inconspicuous size, this cup is exquisite in design and manufacture, making it one signature piece of the luxury silver vessel produced in Tang Dynasty China. The Tang Dynasty, spanning from the 7th to the 9th century CE, is viewed as the golden age of the Chinese civilization. This great empire reigned over a politically unified and economically flourishing country. Meanwhile, the Tang court extended its influence to Central Asia and maintained a close contact with other cultures of the Eurasian continent via both the Silk Road and the maritime routes. The focus of my talk today, the silver stand cup, is an embodiment of the transmission of art and culture along the Silk Road during the Medieval period. In this talk, I'm going to offer an in-depth reading of this cup through three lenses. First, I will investigate the transmission of its shape and decoration. Secondly, I will address the issue around materiality by looking at the production and cultural significance of silver. Lastly, I will contextualize the use of stand cup at extend the engagement between humans and things by looking at the ways of holding cups and the types of wine that were consumed. Through these three aspects, I hope we will see in the end that the form of the folded cup, the medium of silver, as well as the manner of using the cup are all related to the wine culture of West and Central Asia. It is through the vibrant exchange along the Silk Road that the artisan in China managed to produce such an extraordinary artifact, reflecting the cosmopolitan taste of the Tang dynasty. Let me start with its form. This drinking vessel features a cup standing on a trumpet-shaped foot. This might seem to be an ordinary shape of stand cups to our modern eyes. However, this form was not known in ancient China before the 5th century CE. During the Bronze Age in China, it is this type of cup, which is called que in Chinese, that served as a common drinking vessel. The bronze jade cup featured a deep body supported by three blade-shaped legs. When using the cup for drinks, you would hold the handle attached to the body and drink from the extended spout. During the Han dynasty, the Chinese would drink wine from an oval-shaped cup with two handles attached to the ring. This type of drinking vessel is usually called the ear cup, named after the two crescent handles in the shape of human ears. When using the ear cup, you would hold the two handles by your two hands and drink from the narrow side of the mouth. Made of lacquer, a material that needs extensive labor work, the ear cup is among the most valuable crafts produced during the Han dynasty. According to the textual record, one lacquered ear cup equals the value of 10 cups made of bronze. A large number of lacquered ear cups have been excavated from high-ranking tombs, showing its popularity among Han dynasty elites. One of the best-known examples is retrieved from the tomb of Ma Wangdui in South China, which you see here on the lower right. The interior of the cup is coated by red lacquer and is painted with curvy lines in black. At the center of the cup inscribes three Chinese characters, meaning, please have a drink, confirming the function of the cup is to serve the wine. It is not until the 5th century that the stained cups appeared in China. Not surprisingly, the early examples of stained cups are all foreign imports. Take this cup, excavated from the city of Datong in North China, for example. It is shaped into a rounded bowl standing on a trumpet-shaped foot. The body of the cup is embellished with four Hellenistic-style human figures in high relief. The female figure you see in the center features an elegant slender body and is wearing a long-flowing attire that is Greek in style. In between the figures are stylized plants topped by human head. Around the ring is a row of crouching deers, indicating the influence of nomadic art. Based on its stylistic and productional features, Borish Marshak, the leading scholar of Central Asian art and archaeology, suggests that this luxury object, discovered in North China, was likely manufactured in ancient Bactria, which is located in modern-day Afghanistan. Ancient Bactria was the crossroad of Eurasia. It maintained a strong tie to the Hellenistic tradition brought by Alexander the Great's exhibition to the East. Meanwhile, it received substantial influence from the steppes to its north, India to its south, and Sasanian realm to its west. The convergence of different cultures explains the highly diverse iconographical and stylistic features exhibited on this stained cup. At the same time, ancient Bactria is well connected to China via the Silk Road, which provide an avenue for the movement of people, objects, and ideas between the East and West. Artifacts of high value and portable size were likely brought by merchants, monks, and envoys from Central Asia to China via tribute or trade. After the exotic drinking vessel being transmitted to China, they started to inspire local production of luxury silverware. One early attempt by Chinese craftsmen in the late 5th and early 6th century is this type of silver cup, which resembles the oval shape of the Han Dynasty ear cup, but with the addition of a short foot supporting the collinear body. The adding of a foot and the use of silver to interpret a classical drinking vessel used to be made of lacquer illustrate how the production of luxury drinking vessels in early medieval China was inspired by these foreign imports. By the 8th century during the Tang Dynasty, the shape of footed cup is quite established. According to the study of Qi Dongfang, a renowned scholar on Tang history and archaeology, there are over 30 pieces of stained cup that are either excavated from underground in China or in museum collections around the world, including the one from the Asian Society and this one from the Art Institute of Chicago. Unfortunately, none of them bear inscriptions that allows us to assign a precise date. But excavated pieces from Tang tombs and courts, such as this one on the right, excavated from the Tang capital Chang'an, which is present-day city of Xi'an, help archaeologists to date the group of stained cups to the first half of the 8th century. After tracing the transmission of shapes, now let's turn our attention to the surface decoration of the wine cups. While the early 5th century stained cup imported from ancient Bactria are decorated with motifs foreign to China, such as a crouching deer and Hellenistic figures, the Tang silver cups are adorned by patterns that show Chinese taste. The exterior of the silver cup in the Asian Society is shaped into eight petal-like lobes, which becomes the Four miniature bird and flower paintings, alternating with four curved floral vines, are displayed within the lobed frames. During the Tang dynasty, bird and flower flourished as an independent genre, along with landscape and figurative paintings. Even though few scroll paintings dated to the Tang dynasty survived till today, murals excavated from underground burials offered a glance into the composition and style of Tang bird and flower. Juxtaposing one section from our silver cup and one panel from a Tang tomb mural painting, we can easily see their shared compositional design of placing a bigger walking bird in the center foreground, surrounded by tree branches. Flying birds of smaller scales are positioned in the upper part along with clouds, indicating the space of sky. The floral motif from side by side with the bird and flowers on the silver cup is also a popular decorative pattern during the Tang dynasty. While its ultimate origin might be traced back to the Palmyra scrolls from the Mediterranean world, the scroll motif becomes more localized during the Tang by incorporating various flowers to enrich the vine. This pattern is ubiquitous in Tang art and architecture, appearing not just on decorative objects like the drinking cup, but even in Buddhist cave temples like the Dunhuang Mogao cave. Even though the decorative motif on the silver cup are Chinese in taste, the silver work technique that create those motifs are relatively new to China. The Chinese metalsmiths are more familiar with casting technique, which was first developed in the bronze industry. Back to the 2nd millennium BCE, Chinese artisans had already mastered the piece mode casting technique, not only for shaping their desired form, but also for the surface decoration and even inscription. Our silver cup, however, is not via casting, but by hammering a thin layer of silver sheet. Then the surface is chased to render the main motif of birds, flowers, and vine scrolls. The background of the cup is not left empty, it is filled with tiny circles achieved via embossing. All these metalwork techniques, hammering, chasing, engraving, embossing, had long been applied on silverware of southern Iran and Central Asia, and was likely introduced to China during the early medieval period. While there is no specific mention of the transmission of silver techniques to China in a historical text, a record of Central Asian merchants brought glass object and then introduced glass making technique to north China in the 5th century might help us to imagine the knowledge of silver working was transmitted in the similar manner with the movement of people along the Silk Road. As a matter of fact, not only silver work techniques were introduced to China from the west, silver as a material for luxury goods is also a relatively new concept in medieval China. Traditionally, precious metal with its shining and garish appearance was not part of the cultural sphere of the Han Chinese, who prioritized bronze and jade for making their prestigious artifacts. Gold and silverware are not considered as a fine and collectible form of art by ancient Chinese, whose concept of art was largely shaped by the Confucius idea of scholarly learning and unpretentious simplicity. Han Chinese disdain towards objects made of precious metal is demonstrated in this comment by Xu Xiaosi, a Han Chinese high-ranking minister at the Sassanchi court. It is recorded in Nanshi, the history of the Sassan dynasty composed in the 7th century, that upon a royal wedding, Xu Xiaosi, the Han Chinese minister, criticized the use of silver cups by saying, for weddings of kings, marquis, and court ladies, it is a recent practice to use authentic silver cups as a nuptial wine cup. And the nuptial candles are extravagantly decorated, and this harms the ancient institute. Considering the Chinese inherited bias towards gold and silver, then how come did silver become such a prominent and highly valued material during the Tang dynasty? The critics go to several ethnic groups with nomadic and semi-nomadic background who ruled North China during the 4th to the 6th century before the founding of the Tang dynasty. Unlike the Han Chinese, the people of nomadic lineage did not hold any prejudice against objects made of shiny metal. Rather, they adorned gold and silver. For the nomads, artifacts made of precious metals, including body ornamentations, horse gears, and household utensils, are highly valuable, portable, and displayable. The luxury metalwork functioned as their token of wealth and power. Meanwhile, with the flourishing of the Silk Road, more gold and silver products produced in Central and West Asia, like the ancient Bactria stained cup decorated with Hellenistic figures, flooded into China and greatly shaped the material taste of the Chinese. Collecting exotic gold and silver artifacts becomes a fashion among the elites. In the recorded Buddhist monasteries in Luoyang composed in the 6th century, one passage recalls the ostentatious deeds of Yuan Chen, a Northern Wei royal prince. He often gathered the members of the royal household at his mansion and displayed all his treasures. That includes more than hundreds of gold vessels and silver jars, about the same amount of gold and silver bowls, footed containers, plates, and boxes. And it is to be noted that this such marvelous craftsmanship was not to be found in China, but all come from Western regions. The Western regions is both a geographical and cultural term referring to the land west of China proper. Geographically speaking, it includes the region of modern-day Xinjiang, Central Asia, and West Asia. Culturally, it denotes non-Han Chinese foreignness and exoticism. The zeal for silverware from Western regions continued to the Tang dynasty. Exoticas were not only collected, but also appropriated and imitated in Tang China. And our silver stem cup just served as a perfect example illustrating the production of prestigious food in China under the Western influence. After examining the shape, decoration, and material of the wine cup, now we need to ask how the stem cup was used. To answer this question, I contextualized the use of wine cup at banquets by bringing the visual representation of fisting that shows how the cups is handled by the user. Public fisting was not only a platform to display the luxury tableware of magnificent design, it also provided a stage for banqueters to demonstrate their table manner and noble status. The depiction of banquets is usually found in mural painting from medieval period Chinese tombs. Take the tomb of Xie Xin couple dated to the 5th century for example. The deceased couple is seated side by side in a full frontal view against a multiple panel screen and underneath a pavilion. They are attended by servants and maids represented in a smaller scale and in a three-quarter view. In front of the master couple, there is a long table. It is laid with five plates and a dozen of smaller cups indicating a fisting theme. In this mural painting, the hand gesture of the central figure is meticulously articulated. The elite lady holds a drinking cup in her left hand and a fan with a long handle in her right hand. The cup features an oval body and a trumpet-shaped foot, a shape that recalls the standard cup. The noble woman grabs the food of the cup with her thumb and forefinger while her pinky extends outward. This elegant hand gesture of holding a drinking cup with the thumb and forefinger while extending the pinky is a visual language to denote the rank of the cup holder. This body language was not only used in the China proper but was prevalent across Eurasia during the medieval period. In the mural painting from Balai Katipa in modern-day Uzbekistan, we found banqueters clad in an elaborate costume, use their thumb and forefinger to hold the bottom of the cup and stretch their pinkies. A considerable number of stone statues of the Turkic Khaganate also employ this hand gesture to display the noble status. Take the stone sculpture depicting a Turkish leader from Xinjiang for example. The majestic figure is standing firmly with the two feet turning outward. One of his hands is gripping on a sword. The other hand is holding a standard cup with the thumb and forefinger. This elegant gesture of holding a cup in front of the chest with the thumb and forefinger while extending the pinky is a visual language of nobility. Its wide distribution from West Asia to the steppes and to East Asia indicates this hand gesture become a shared language among elite across Eurasia during the medieval period. By adopting this particular way of holding a drinking cup that was the same as Central Asia and the Turkish aristocrats, the Chinese elites showed their awareness and acceptance of the cross-cultural practice. Their interest and willingness to follow a transregional fashion and the ambition to articulate their nobility via a shared body language that can be communicated to an international audience. Lastly, I would like to briefly examine what kind of alcoholic drinks were likely consumed with the standing cup at the banquets. Traditionally, the Chinese drink a type of alcohol called Baijiu or white liquor. The white liquor was made mainly from grains including rice, wheat, and millet. In Important Arts for People's Welfare, an ancient text on agriculture composed during the 6th century, more than 40 ways to produce Chinese alcoholic beverage were documented. In general, it involves two stages. First, prepare wheat and millet in a warm and damp environment to make Qu, a type of enzymes, and then use enzymes to ferment the grain into alcohol. The fermented grain beverage has a long history in China, which can be traced back to the late Neolithic period, as microchemical analysis of some residue on pottery shirts suggested. The white liquor is perfect to be held in the lacquered ear cup of Han Dynasty, since the light color of the liquor allows drinker to appreciate the complicated design of the cup on its interior. On the other hand, grape wines and grapes are quintessentially exotic to China. It is believed that the earliest evidence of grape wine was from Ancient Near East, pottery dated to 3500 BCE from Godin Tehpa in Iran contains some British residue that shows the acid of the grapes that was likely preserved by the tree resin. Chinese first encounter with the exotic wine made of grape was recorded in Shi Ji, the record of the grand historian composed during the Han Dynasty. The historical account mentioned that when Zhang Qian, a Chinese envoy, lead diplomatic trips to Western region, which is here, he saw people using grapes to make wine and learned that the rich household would store tons of grape wine, which did not decay even after decades. Archaeological discovery testified the cultivation of grape and the production of grape wine in the Western region. At the Yanghai Cemetery in Turfan, archaeologists identified a grape wine that can be dated to the time of Zhang Qian or even earlier. The tradition of planting grapes and drinking grape wine in the Western regions continued to the Tang Dynasty. After the Tang brought part of the Western region under its control in the mid-7th century, the way of making grape wine was transmitted to the Tang capital, Chang'an. According to Taiping Yulan, an encyclopedia commissioned by the imperial court in the 10th century, the Tang troops, upon conquering Gaochang, which is an oasis town in the Western regions, obtained the fruit of grapes and later planted in a garden at the capital and learned the way of making wine. Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty even participated in winemaking himself. While when the wine was made, it had eight colors, smelled fragrantly and strongly, and tasted increasingly refined. The emperor bestowed the wine he made to the officials, and then people at the capital started to appreciate the taste of grape wines. To drink the grape wine, people during the Tang Dynasty were most likely to use the cup made of precious metal, like this one. The great Tang poet Levi once wrote, The grape wine, the golden cup, the young lady from the Wu region is serving the wine. The grape wine, which is darker in color compared with the Chinese white liquor, would cover the interior design of the cup. This might be the reason why only the exterior of the silver stained cup is profusely decorated, while the interior remains largely unadorned. Using a drinking vessel whose shape is inspired by the foreign imports, and made of silver, a conventional and unconventional material for Han Chinese, and use it to drink the wine, which was not traditionally produced in China. The silver footed cup, the manner of using it, and the wine it served, all together, formed a clear statement of the cosmopolitan taste of the Tang Dynasty. Starting from the wine cups along the Silk Road, I'm concluding my talk today with the wine. Maybe next time when you are enjoying a cup of wine in a stained cup, you will think about the silver cup of the Tang Dynasty, which I hope you will have a chance to visit in the gallery, and appreciate its exquisite design, and the cultural significance. Thanks all for your attention. If you have any questions for me, you can reach me via my email address, or through my Insta account. Thank you all for listening, and again, hope you can enjoy the exhibition.