ROGER KEVERNE WINTER 2002 Ceramics - Item 29

29 An extremely fine and rare painted pottery model of musicians on a camel’s back Tang dynasty, early 8th century Height: 22 5/8 in, 55 cm the camel stands four-square on a rectangular pottery base. Its head is held high and the top of its head, neck, front haunches and tail are carved to simulate fur. A platform covered with a fringed cloth rests on the camel’s back and supports an orchestra of six female musicians and a dancer, who would have combined the role with that of singer. The musicians are seated cross-legged and wear high-necked tunics and trousers; each plays a different instrument: the horizontal flute, the konghou (harp), the paixiao (panpipe), the pipa (lute), the transverse flute and the sheng (pipe harmonica). The dancer wears a long, high-waisted robe with sleeves that cover her hands. All the slender young women have beautifully modelled and particularly attractive faces. The musicians wear their hair parted in the centre and tied in two buns and the dancer has a high, central bun over loosely drawn-up hair. The grey pottery is extensively covered with original pigments.

This dating is consistent with Oxford Authentication’s report C101a25. This model is closely related to the eight musicians on horseback illustrated as no. 34, pp. 32–5 and on the cover of our Winter 2001 exhibition catalogue, and most probably comes from the same tomb. While glazed examples of musicians on camelback are known, it is extremely rare to find female musicians. A group of four Central Asian musicians and a dancer unearthed in 1957 from the tomb of Xianyu, dated 723, in Tinghui near Xi’an, Shaanxi province, and now in the collection of the National Museum of Chinese History is illustrated in Yu, A Journey into China’s Antiquity, Vol. Three, no. 54, pp. 62–3. A further camel bearing an orchestra of seven male musicians and a female dancer, excavated from a tomb dated 720–5 in Zhongbaocun near Xi’an in 1959 and now in the collection of the Shaanxi History Museum, is illustrated in Wang, Ten Major Museums of Shaanxi, p. 20. Both of these camels are illustrated as figs. 41 and 42 in Knauer, The Camel’s Load in Life and Death, which gives a fascinating overview of the camel in Han and Tang times. Knauer comments that “the combination of camel and band must have seemed a perfect embodiment of Western taste to the Tang public” (p. 65).