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Overlay and p'ing-t'o in T‘ang silverwork
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
The most familiar techniques of the Chinese silversmith in the T‘ang period are chasing, punching, and repoussé. Openwork is not infrequent, but the spherical censers with ajouré ornament over the whole of their surface, the bowl covers and hairpins treated in this fashion, do not belong to the most refined products or the most original designs of the T‘ang masters. The two pieces described in this article use openwork in a different way, as the overlay of a solid ground. The delicacy of the ornament and some of the technical features are exceptional.
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- Articles
- Information
- Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 102 , Issue 2: Studies in Honour of Sir Mortimer Wheeler , April 1970 , pp. 210 - 215
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1970
References
1 Wilson, D. M., “An inlaid iron folding stool in the British Museum”, Mediaeval Archaeology, I, 1957, 39–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is dated to the fifth century a.d. The scramasax, also in the British Museum, is of about the same age; on the Japanese swords cf. Yukio, Kobayashi, Kodai no gijutsu, Tokyo, 1962, 188 ff.Google Scholar
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3 The author thanks Sir Harry Garner for his kindness in placing the shears at his disposal for examination and publication. The restoration is the work of Mr. Philip Ward, formerly of the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum.
4 Cf. Wên-wu, 1965, no. 10, 29 ff., and fig. 22 (5, 8). The tomb described here is of the Eastern Chin period, at Hsiang-shan, Nanking.
5 Ch'ien-shu Wang Chien mu fa-chüeh pao-kao, p. 32 and fig. 36.
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8 The term p'ing-t'o 
(Jap. heidatsu) occurs in the T'ang shu (Su Tsung chi) in a passage naming the year chih tê 2 (a.d. 757). This technical term refers to the cutting out of the figures for inlay from a flat sheet of silver or gold. It occurs frequently in the early inventories of the Tōdaiji and the Shōsōin, alternating rather unintelligibly with p'ing wen 
, which from the ninth century supersedes it altogether. For all the efforts of Japanese scholars to distinguish two processes, giving inlay with a quite smooth surface, or inlay with a slight relief of the elements etc., there is something to be said for the simple explanation advanced by Hirose Kuniyori in 1929 (“Heimon heidatsu no toki”, in Shōsōin no kenkyū, Tōyōbijutsukai), that the strange Chinese word p‘ing-t‘o was increasingly replaced by the more descriptive word p‘ing-wen, “level ornament”, denoting the same material.
9 Shōsōin gomotsu zuroku, II, pl. 35; Thomson, N. in “A reconstructed Chinese lacquer box”, Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, XIX, 1965, 66–68Google Scholar, describes a cylindrical lacquer box covered by floral ornament in ajouré silver. This metal inlay was no doubt originally applied to the curved surface, but it now appears on a reconstruction.
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11 Shōsōin gomotsu zuroku, III, pls. 43–7.
12 B. Gyllensvärd, op. cit., fig. 75 i.
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