Lacquer Pot with Needle-carved Cloud Motif

Unearthed in Yaozhuang Western-Han Tomb of Ganquan town, Hanjiang district of Yangzhou city in 1985, this lacquer pot, with its cute, distinctive shape, brilliant decoration of various meticulous motifs, and its good condition, deserves the acknowledgement as the representative of the needle-carved lacquerware of the Western Han dynasty (202 BC-8 AD). Crafted based on a wood body mixed with fabric, this pot has an upright rim, a concave lid, a bulging belly and a flat bottom. It features red lacquer inside and pale brown outside. There are nine decorative belts on the pot from top to bottom, with S-shaped clouds as the main ones, around which scatter motifs of intertwining leaves, lozenges, diagonal crosses, saw teeth, cones, etc.