12. LARGE SANCAI-GLAZED POTTERY FIGURE
OF A DAPPLED FEREGHAN HORSE
Tang Dynasty (618-907)
28 1/2" (72.3 cm.) high, 31 7/8” (80.7 cm.) long

The horse stands four-square on a rectangular plinth. The highly groomed animal sports a fringe on its head turned to its left and a meticulously dressed mane. The pale creamy brown glaze of the body is covered with dappled, regular white spots in relief and mounted on the back with an elaborate saddle with pleated fabric; the top saddle blanket is covered in green, white and amber splashes and the under-blanket is scored with cross hatching. The straps of the ceremonial harness are hung with pendant foliate medallions decorated with high relief frogs and embellished with relief florets on the strap work. There are areas where the green glaze from the medallions has run in attractive long streaks down the body. Some of the amber glaze from the mane has run onto the neck of the animal on its right side.

There appears to be only two other sancai-glazed horses of this distinct dappled design with the same combination of pale brown body and white circular markings. Both of these are stallions with much thicker necks and short, cropped manes. The first example in the Kyoto National Museum, designated in Japan as an Important Art Object with a plume on the forehead and a shorn mane dressed with three crenellated tufts, is recorded in Mayuyama Seventy Years, pl. 197, and again in Sekai Toji Zenshu, Shogakukan Series, Vol. 11, col. pl. 192; the other comparable example with a parted forelock and brush-cut mane, is published in Chinese Ceramics in the Toguri Collection, col. pl. 39.The saddles are different on each of these three, the Kyoto horse with a green and amber under-blanket and amber saddle; the Toguri horse with a brown saddle with green and white-splashed under-blanket. Edward H. Schafer in The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics ” relates that “the men of the T’ang….had heard…of a “Dappled Horse Country” (Po ma kuo) far to the north where the snow was always heaped high on the ground.” Whether this refers to a strain of horse similar to the three examples above or the piebald variety is uncertain.

During the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 8) when the eastern Silk Road came under Chinese control, the ‘Heavenly Horses” of Ferghana became of strategic importance towards the control of a wide expanse of the empire under constant threat from the Xiongnu nomads. Emperor Wu Di waged war on Ferghana, eventually winning 3,000 steeds as war booty. By the Tang period, the breadth of the Chinese empire was more than ever in need of horses of this breed to maintain Imperial ambitions as well as to indulge the privileged classes in their love for the game of polo. Equestrianism as an aristocratic privilege was asserted as early as 667, in an edict forbidding artisans and tradesmen this right. The use of these grand imported horses as status symbols was nowhere more ostentatious than in the case of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 713-756) who commandeered hundreds of ‘dancing horses’ to put on display at his birthday celebrations in their full caparisoned glory. Horses sent as gifts or in tribute were often painted by court artists. Six of Emperor Xuanzong’s favourite imported horses were recorded, the best known work of which is ‘Night-shining White’ (Shaoye bo) by Han Gan now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The importance of foreigners in the horse trade was crucial to supplies. Edward H. Schafer, ibid. records that Emperor Xuanzong “issued an edict authorizing trade in horses with the “Six Western Barbarian Tribes”. On another occasion “A Chinese prince demeaned himself by calling in person on the Turkish Khan in his distant camp….the prince revealed his rich gifts ….and a return mission was sent to the T’ang court with a herd of horses.” However, “greatest and most arrogant of the supplier of horseflesh to the Chinese were the Uighur Turks, who dominated the horse market after the middle of the 8th Century.”