Lacquer Plate with Colored Curly-cloud Pattern

Excavated from the Warring-states Tomb in Orchard Brick Factory, Xihu town, suburbs of Yangzhou city in 1993, this large plate in a standard shape embellished with various well-arranged colored motifs represents the higher-level lacquerware-making techniques of craftspeople in the Warring States period (475-221 BC). Crafted based on a wood body mixed with fabric, this piece has a wide slanted rim, a sloped wall that tapers at the lower end and a slightly-raised bottom. The bottom, composed of two sections with different coloring, features pure red in its outer section and three groups of swirls and deformed bird-heads in dark and pale red on a black foundation in the inner part. While its rim embellished with the combination of wave-shaped motifs and double-line lozenges with one line dark and the other pale, the plate’s interior wall is decorated with seven groups of symmetrical folded lines, around which scatter S-shaped clouds, curly clouds and round dots. Lines composed of deformed bird-head motifs can be seen on the exterior side of the wall.