The stand was formed from a hollow, tubular shaft supported on an inverted bowl-shaped base and surmounted by a fantastic creature with leonine features. The wide base is rimmed by a flattened lip and marked with concentric grooves on the surface that are repeated midway on the shaft. The creature molded and sculpted in the round rests on a stand surmounting the shaft pierced through with large apertures positioned to hold the handle of either a cup or bowl or a flat iron. The ceramic was likely based on a bronze prototype such as the example once in the Kaikodo collection (fig. 1).1
A similar bronze was discovered in Hebei province and was identified as a measuring device (fig. 2). In the event of a cup, it would likely have had a perforated lid and thus serve as an incense burner, or, on the other hand, it could have functioned as an oil-burning lamp, a deng, such as earthenware examples discovered in a tomb in Hebei province (fig.3) and another from a Jin tomb in Luoyang, Henan province (fig. 4). A bronze version without the arm and cup was identified as part of a stand for “an iron or brazier” (fig. 5); the so-called flat iron in the Shodo Museum in Tokyo is complete with an openwork cover (fig. 6).2
The inventiveness of Han craftsmen seems to have been boundless. The present group of stands leaves us to ponder whatever inspired that particular form, what sparked the idea that now leaves us in some awe.
1.See Kaikodo Journal IX (Spring 2001), no. 54, pp. 186-189 and 316.
2.A similar earthenware stand was published in the Schloss collection in Ancient Chinese Ceramic Sculpture, 1977, no. 7B and again by Candace J. Lewis: Into the Afterlife: Han and Six Dynasties Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection, Vasser College, Poughkeepsie, 1990, no, 30.
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Fig. 1: Bronze stand with lion-shaped finial, Eastern Han, 1st-3rd century, formerly Kaikodo, after Kaikodo Journal IX (Spring 2001), no. 54, p. 187.
Fig. 2: Bronze stand for measuring device, Eastern Han, 1st-3rd century, excavated in Hebei province, after Hebeisheng chutu wenwu xuanji, Beijing, 1980, fig. 271, p. 156.
Fig. 3: Earthenware stand for a lamp, Jin-Wei, 3rd century, from a tomb in Yanshi, Henan province, after in Kaogu yu wenwu, 1985:8, fig.11:13, p. 728.
Fig.4: Earthenware stand for a lamp from a Jin tomb in Luoyang, Henan province, after Wenwu 1997:9, fig. 9, p. 52.
Fig. 5: Bronze stand, Eastern Han, 1st –3rd century, after Jessica Rawson and Emma Bunker, Ancient Chinese and Ordos Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1990, no. 47, p. 142.
Fig. 6: Bronze stand, Eastern Han, 1st-3rd century, Shodoo Museum, Tokyo, after Sekai Bijitsu Zenshu, vol. 13, Tokyo, 1962, fig. 96.
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