Tang horse

A real prestige horse

During the Tang dynasty (618 - 907), China was an open and cosmopolitan country. There was lively trade between China and the Mediterranean via the famous Silk Road. Horses and camels played an important role in the transport of goods. The horses, bred in Central Asia, were also objects of prestige at the Chinese court. They had their own names and some Tang emperors had portraits of their favorite horses made by their court painters.

Even in the afterlife, the Chinese elite did not want to miss their beloved horses. This earthenware horse was made as a burial object for the dead. Although it is more than a thousand years old, it has a particularly modern look. This is partly due to the glaze. The so-called sancai (a three-colour glaze) in brown, green and honey is not applied evenly, but rather splashed onto the horse's body.

During the Tang period, horses and other figures were often mass-produced using a mold. This allowed for certain shapes or models to be mass-produced. However, this also made it possible to copy the ‘Tang horses’, including the spontaneous-looking three-color glaze.

Grave sculpture in the form of a horse, China, Tang dynasty (618 – 907), earthenware, h. 32.3 cm, on loan from Ottema-Kingma Stichting.

If you search for Tang horse on the online marketplace eBay, you will get hundreds of results, with horse figurines starting at 100 euros. So how do you know if you are buying a specimen that is over a thousand years old and not a figurine that was made in a Chinese factory last month? This can be very difficult to determine, even for experts.

In the 1960s, a method was developed, the so-called Thermoluminescence Test, to calculate the age of an ancient pottery object. A sample of the object is taken, which is heated in a laboratory. During heating, a kind of ‘blue light’ is created that indicates how much radiation the sample emits. The more radiation, the more blue light, and therefore the older the object. But the ingenuity of the forgers is endless. Old pottery such as Tang stones or shards from plundered graves can be ground up and, mixed with clay, cast into a new shape. If these pieces are subjected to the TL test and the sample comes from an ‘old’ part, the forgery is classified as Tang. Anyone who thinks they are making a good deal on eBay can therefore be disappointed.

Horses

There is another reason why horses play such an important role in China. The horse is a symbol of speed, strength and energy in the traditional Chinese zodiac. The cycle of rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig repeats itself every twelve years. The new year begins for Chinese people all over the world on the second new moon, in late January or early February, and is marked by the animal symbol of that year. New Year is celebrated in a big way in China, Taiwan and Korea, in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries – and of course in Chinatowns all over the world. Families gather, eat well and have lots of fun, and set off fireworks to drive away evil spirits.

Eva Ströber, former curator Asian ceramics at Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, with thanks to Aafke Koole.