(jazz piano music)
- [Kristen] We are in the Shanghai Museum
looking at a group of figurines from the Tang dynasty.
- [Beth] And the figures we're looking at
in this particular case are all female figures.
- [Kristen] Some of them are standing.
Some of them are sitting.
Some of them are holding birds on their hand.
- [Beth] And it's not just figures that we see
during this time, but we also see horses and camels
and even female figures riding horses.
These figures seem so lifelike
that we almost get a sense of what life was like
in Tang Dynasty, China.
- [Kristen] In particular, at the capital of Chang'an.
Tang Dynasty Chang'an benefited greatly
from the Silk Road connections.
So the Silk Route went right through there.
When we say Silk Route, we don't mean just one road.
We mean a network of trade
that spanned all the way to the Mediterranean.
- [Beth] Often we think about China
as a very separate place from Europe,
from the Mediterranean,
when in fact there were numerous trade routes,
bringing goods back and forth
between what we today call the East and the West.
- [Kristen] It wasn't just silk going one way,
leaving China going to the Mediterranean,
but it was also all of the points along the Silk Road
bringing things in,
in particular from Central Asia,
musical troops on camels would be bringing in
these Central Asian melodies that contributed to
the development of court melodies
at the capital in Chang'an.
- [Beth] And so what we can see is
a life at court in Chang'an that wanted luxury goods,
not things that could be produced locally only,
but things that could be brought
that were exotic from far away.
So, we're talking about a China during the Tang Dynasty
that is much more cosmopolitan.
- [Kristen] Meaning all different kinds of
leisure activities, fashions.
When we look at these figurines in their dress
we see a variety of different colors
and suggestion that they might have been
wearing textile patterns,
textiles that perhaps benefited from motifs
that had come from very far.
Hairstyles that are sculpted into array of different
butterfly shaped formations, moons, and big wisps.
- [Beth] And one of the figures dressed very differently,
perhaps indicating that they're not Chinese,
but from Central Asia.
- [Kristen] You can see the boots,
the shorter robe, the shorter sleeves.
If this was a court dancer at the capital of Chang'an,
we would see long sleeves
so that she could dance and show her movement,
but here, this appears to be
somebody in Central Asian dress.
The pose even actually is very interesting.
She's got a parrot on her hand.
She also has a very elaborate hairstyle,
but seems to be so expressive.
- [Beth] All of these figures have fabulous hairstyle,
so there's a sense of a concern for fashion.
- [Kristen] Even the sculptor is
really trying to capture what their bodies even look like.
- [Beth] Each these figures,
even the ones that are simply standing or sitting,
feel alive,
they have a sense of animation in their bodies.
They tilt their head slightly.
They move their hips slightly.
There's a sense of liveliness,
which in some ways,
feels like a contrast to the idea of where we found them.
These were mostly found in tombs,
although just because we found them in tombs
doesn't mean that they weren't also
found in the court itself,
but they survived because they were found in tombs,
but they're in tombs because people wanted to bring
with them into the afterlife
all the pleasures that they enjoyed in their life at court.
- [Kristen] When they sculpted these kinds of objects,
they're white clay, then glazed on top,
they portrayed these idealized body types.
We have one figurine here who is quite plump,
very voluptuous and she's draped in so much fabric.
You can see the folds of her gown.
She's wearing layers and layers of silk.
Those plumped cheeks was something that
we see throughout sculpture,
not just of women,
but also in Buddhist sculpture at the time.
Buddhism was flourishing with the patronage of the court.
- [Beth] There were Buddhist temples
all along the Silk Route where traders would stop.
The full-figured woman with her arms tucked in her sleeves,
one gets the sense,
not only that that's the ideal beauty form,
but the ideal way of walking,
her gracefulness at court,
and this brown and green is a particular kind of glazing
that's typical of the Tang Dynasty.
- [Kristen] This is the three color glaze, the Sancai,
and that three color glaze is mineral pigments.
We have copper, iron, manganese.
Sometimes you'll also see cobalt.
We have some touches of it on the figurines here,
but typically the three colors being that ivory white,
that amber orange-ish red, and then this vibrant green.
- [Beth] And in the glaze we frequently see dripping,
a sense almost of watercolor.
- [Kristen] When they started to fire these glazes,
they have quite a bit of lead content.
When fired they would drip,
so what would result are these splashy looking drips.
And you'd see the colors pooling together at times.
- [Beth] We're really getting insight
into courtly life at Chang'an during the Tang Dynasty here.
(jazzy piano music)