Zhou Dynasty Glass and Silicate Jewelry Zhou
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Zhou Dynasty Glass anD silicate Jewelry Robert K. Liu ince I began studying the faience, glass and other piece-mold and core-casting, while the latter employed silicate ornaments of the Zhou Dynasty in 1975, this similarly advanced lapidary technology. Even in the 1970s, S field has undergone a sharp dichotomy. While I realized that these early Chinese glassworkers had adapted previously mostly foreign scientists or Chinese outside of some of these same techniques for fabricating their glass China researched their chemical makeup, age and stylistics, ornaments, as seen in mold-cast, press-molded and lapidary- in the past decades Chinese themselves have begun to finished Zhou and Han glass artifacts. My own research on intensively study their composition, through sophisticated composite beads also implicates the role of early ceramics. non-destructive techniques like XRF and Raman While much information is now available to those spectroscopy, but with little attention to their typology, interested in the fascinating array of silicate ornaments chronology or how they were made or used, despite the from the Zhou Dynasty, it is difficult to apply this data enormous increase in number of excavated sites bearing easily towards their dating/chronology and typology, nor such beads (Gan 2009; Kwan 2001, 2013; Lankton and to realize how deeply glass and other silicate usage Dussubieux 2006, 2013; Li et al., 2015; Liu 1975, 1991, penetrated into Chinese society during these very turbulent 2005, 2013; Yang et al., 2013; Zhu 2013). Now regarded as times of constant warfare and intellectual foment of the important cultural relics, beads of the Zhou/Han times were Zhou/Warring States period, as evident by artifacts shown widely sold since at least the 1990s on the world antiquities on page 57, although glass sword furniture of the Mid-to-Late markets, often sourced by looting, and which are still W.S. Periods are not represented. Interestingly, the use of available (Murphy 1995; Liu 1996-1997). fragile glass with weapons like swords was also practiced by Faience, composite silicates and glass came late to the Mycenaeans, in the Late Bronze Age Aegean (Nightingale China, lagging behind the Near East; faience about 1000 2008: 94-95). But in the Aegean, Mesopotamia and Egypt B.C. and composite silicates, frit and glass in the Spring (Rehren 2014), glass may have been more restricted to the and Autumn/Warring States (W.S.) periods of the Zhou elite, while in the Zhou Dynasty, its use spread from the dynasty. By then, bronze and stone industries were emperor down to at least minor officials, evident from well established, with the former using sophisticated beads, which are only found as grave goods. Eyed glass and ZHOU/WARRING STATES FAIENCE, GLASSY FAIENCE, FRIT, GLASS AND COMPOSITE OR GLAZED POTTERY BEADS dating from the Western Zhou to Warring States Period, 1046-221 B.C., ranging from 0.45 to 1.93 centimeters. From left to right, top to bottom: Glassy faience bicone/cylindrical and disk beads; shortest cylindrical turquoise bead by bottom is faience. Adjacent to disk beads is composite/glazed pottery bead colored by Chinese Purple. Below is eyed frit bead, with green/yellow eyes. Slightly below, to the right is Zhou eyed glass bead similar in appearance to Western prototypes. Below and to left is bead with seven/eight-dot glass rosettes, but with a sintered faience core; glass dots are barely slumped. Adjacent and to right is striped eyebead with sintered core, glazed decorations and almost frit-like remnant eyes. To right is glazed pottery/ composite bead with stratified eyes, designs extending carefully around perforation. The six beads showing perforations are glazed pottery, with faience or clay cores, determined by microscopic examination. To right are two square-section glass eyebeads, dating to third century B.C. Transparent hexagonal glass bead in right corner, similar in shape to glass and Chinese purple rods; this bead also occurs in barrel shape. 52 ORNAMENT 38.4.2015 Photographs by Robert K. Liu/Ornament unless otherwise noted. composite beads (with faience or clay cores) and glazed decorations, were popular as funerary objects for about three hundred years, ending about 221 B.C. Such Zhou silicate beads have been used in necklaces, probably earrings, strung sparsely on belts and as amuletic protection of inner and outer coffins (Keller 2013). The language barrier had been the primary hindrance to accessing Chinese glass literature, although recent efforts at translation, like Keller (2013) of Kwan’s extensive survey of ancient Chinese glass/silicates (2001: Fig. 5 chart of eyebeads) and many prominent Chinese researchers now publishing in English language journals, sometimes with a Western co-author, have helped greatly. Chang (in Chinese, 1997) has discussed in detail the stylistics of W.S. beads. However, there still exists the problem that many of the silicates tested are either not figured, are fragmentary, or not well photographed, as well as subject to misidentifications and incorrect terminology which have hampered full application of their data. Glass has been misidentified as faience or frit, and vice versa, as well as calling eye decorations as inlaid, which is a misunderstanding, instead of by hotworking. Some Chinese glass scientists now regard Zhou faience, glass and other silicate ornaments the result WARRING STATES GLASS/COMPOSITE BEADS, with design motifs of of “self-invention” (Gan 2009), due to the composition of stratified eyes, (some acentric/horned), rosettes, pentagonal many silicates found during this time being unique to enclosures and microdots, as well as precision workmanship. Largest Chinese glass, and that some of the objects produced are bead is approximately five centimeters long. Photographed by author artifacts only used by Chinese, like bi and cicadas. However, in 1975 at and courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Canada. Gan (2009: 64, 67) believes glass/silicate technology came into China from West Asia along the Oasis Silk Road to Xinjiang, via nomadic tribes like the Hurrians, especially Persian-Scythians called the Sai. Engle (1976) also postulated a Hurrian role in Chinese glass technology. Yang et al. (2013) tested four eyed beads from a Henan tomb of the Middle to Late W.S. Period (475-221 B.C.); they could not tell from visual examination if they were faience (glazed quartz), frit, glazed pottery (with clay cores) or glass. Three were confirmed as beads with faience cores, one with clay core and all were decorated with glazes related to frit or glass, demonstrating a close relationship to these other silicates. When examined visually, Yang states it is very difficult to differentiate these types; under 20-40x stereoscopic microscopy; this is also my personal experience with Zhou silicates, a virtual not being able to see the forest for the trees situation. But if one views intact or even broken specimens, at a lower magnification like the upper right-hand image on this page, it is much easier to differentiate or identify the various categories of silicate ornaments, especially if one has had enough exposure to motifs, typology, colors, and appearances of cores and surfaces that appear on such ornaments. Identification at either ends of the spectrum is relatively easy, in terms of simple faience and glassy faience beads, as ZHOU STONE, GLASS AND SILICATE JEWELRY: upper image of jade arc well as real glass beads; it is frit, composite or glazed beads, or huang, strung with eyebeads (probably glass, Kwan 2001: 158-159), with either faience or clay cores that are hard to differentiate. terminating with superb glass bead shown in top photograph, second Chinese Blue and Chinese Purple, containing barium/lead row. This is a Royal Ontario Museum display photographed in 2014 by oxides, color both glassy faience and glazed pottery beads. Walker Qin. Courtesy of ROM. Lower image is closeup of Zhou necklace of similar huang, interspersed with cylindrical and disk How glass components or glaze is applied to such beads is carnelian beads and glassy faience bicone beads in excellent still little understood, although Yang (2013) states faience condition; this adornment with seven huang can only be worn by the glaze decorations are directly applied (not efflorescence or emperor. Photograph by Walker Qin, courtesy of Henan Museum. 53 ORNAMENT 38.4.2015 REPRESENTATIVE WARRING STATES GLASS BEADS, from left to right, top to bottom: W.S. GLASS CYLINDRICAL BEADS, intact and broken, decorated with diamond pattern and stratified eyes, dated 475-221 B.C.; some have persimmon calyx pattern or microdots (Kwan 2001: 177-187), 4.4 centimeters long. CRESCENT-SHAPED GLASS ORNAMENT, not perforated, with stratified eyes/microdots (KWAN 2001: 216-217), Late W.S., third century B.C., 2.9 centimeters long. W.S. GLASS BARREL BEAD with elaborate lines of dots, rosettes and stratified eyes, on diamond-shaped dots, result of first dot being pulled into this shape, similar in motif to bead on page 53; dated 475-221 B.C., 3.0 centimeters high. Photographs courtesy of Shanghai Museum of Glass (SHMOG). WARRING STATES STRATIFIED HORNED EYEBEAD WITH 7 - EYE ROSETTES, perhaps the most complex and precise of the Zhou Dynasty, 1.9 centimeters high, with 0.8 centimeters perforation. Courtesy of the late Albert Summerfield. Although devitrified and repaired, it is in excellent condition, being a medium transparent blue color under the corrosion; composed of at least 169 separate pieces of glass, it was most likely fabricated by component- dotting (Liu 1995, Holland and Holland 2003). Purchased in 1986 from a French collector, it sold after the death of the owner for some forty times the original price. While Kwan (2001: 148-153) shows a number of other W.S. glass horned eyebeads, some with rosettes, no other known specimen is like this one.