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Chinese Art - Handicrafts

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Ivory and bone objects
牙骨器文物

Bronze Ritual Vessels
Gold and Silver
Other Metal Items
Jade and other Stones
Bamboo
Wood (except furniture)
Paper
Ivory and Bone
Leather and Horn
Lacquerware
Earthen and Stone Ware
Chinaware
Enamel, Cloisonné
Glass
This wonderful 30 cm tall cup the Shang period is made of an elephant tusk and inlaid with turquois stones. It was unearthed a tomb at the Shang 商 capital Anyang/Henan. Durint this historical period, the climate seems to have been much warmer than today, so even elephants and rhinos could make their life at least in the Yangtse valley.
Real ivory becomes yellowish or brownish in the course of time, like this 11 cm tall Ming time 明 sculpture of a Buddhist Guanyin 觀音 goddess offering a baby. Much in Buddhist religion is very similar to Christian practice. Here, the feminine Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva is very similar to Mary holding Jesus.
This brush container the Ming Dynasty has still the simple natural form of an elephant tusk, round and hollowed out in the middle. The surface is decorated with the picture of pine trees.
But not only the round shape was used. This example has a quadrangular shape whose surfaces are decorated with scenes of landscape and gardens.
This is an example of ivory not used as a ground material, but for inlaids. This round fan has a wooden handle and a wooden frame. The face is made of many threads interwoven like a tennis-racket and inlaid with ivory cut in the shape of flowers. The end of the handle is decorated with a yellow thread bundle.
Already brownish, we have here a beautiful piece of an ivory incence burner in the shape of a gourd. The leaves are painted green, and the corpus is pierced to let out the odor of the incence. The whole object is standing on a wooden base.
39 x 32 cm big is this picture made of ivory and painted with different colors the Qing Dynasty 清. It shows people enjoying the blossom of the plum trees during nighttime. The people are gathering in a courtyard, chatting and holding lanterns to look at the flowers.
This small ivory vessel is called you 卣 and is shaped after an antique wine pot. The corpus is pierced and could rather have been used as a container for good smelling things, spreading the odor around in the room.
A female artist with an umbrella, cut ivory. It is a product the People's Republic.
This couple of bone hairpins the Shang Dynasty is as beautiful as if it had been made of ivory.
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