I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
Tang Dynasty Tomb Figures
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A tomb is a snapshot of what mattered. These figures, never meant to be seen again after burial, show a cosmopolitan empire where Central Asian traders were common enough to model in clay.
At a glance
- Origin
- Tang dynasty China
- Technique
- Lead-glazed earthenware, two firings
- Colours
- Predominantly brown, green, and creamy off-white
- Primary use
- Tomb furnishings for the afterlife
Look closer
Three colours, but often more
The name sancai means 'three colours', and the palette is usually amber or brown, green, and a creamy off-white. But blues and blacks also appear. The blue came from imported cobalt, which made it expensive, so it was used sparingly and often on smaller pieces. The other colours came from adding metal oxides to a lead glaze. The white might be the natural colour of the fired clay, sometimes with a transparent glaze over it, or a white slip applied before glazing.
Central Asian faces on the grooms
The grooms attending the horses and camels often have distinctly non-Chinese features: deeper-set eyes, prominent noses, beards. These are not caricatures but careful representations of the Sogdian, Turkic and other Central Asian traders and handlers who worked the Silk Road. Their presence in elite Chinese tombs shows how normalised these foreign figures had become in Tang society, important enough to be modelled as essential servants for the journey after death.
Made in sections, then assembled
Large figures were not thrown or modelled as single pieces. They were cast in moulds as separate sections—head, torso, limbs—then assembled after a first firing and glazed for a second. This technique made it possible to produce figures at scale and at a price lower than porcelain or celadon. The joins are sometimes visible, and the moulding allowed workshops to produce multiples efficiently, which is why certain types—particularly camels and horses—appear repeatedly with only minor variation.
The story
Sancai-glazed figures appear around the year 700 and remain closely associated with the Tang dynasty, particularly its confident, outward-looking middle period. The technique uses lead-glazed earthenware, which required two firings but was easier and cheaper to produce than the high-fired porcelains and celadons that defined elite Chinese ceramics. That relative affordability made it practical for large-scale tomb furnishing, where quantities mattered and the objects would never be seen again after burial.
The glazes pooled and ran during firing, creating streaked, mottled effects that dealers in China and the West later called 'egg-and-spinach' for their combination of green, yellow and white. The unpredictability of the glaze flow meant no two pieces were identical, even when cast from the same mould. The effect is lively rather than controlled, which distinguishes sancai work from the more restrained aesthetic of high-fired wares.
The figures themselves—camels, horses, grooms, musicians, officials, guardians—were made for tombs, part of the provision for the afterlife that had been a feature of Chinese burial practice for centuries. By the Tang period, the custom had become elaborate among the elite, and tombs were furnished with entire retinues. The presence of camels and Central Asian grooms reflects the importance of the Silk Road to Tang prosperity and the visibility of foreign traders in Chinese cities. These were not exotic curiosities but everyday figures in the empire's commercial life, significant enough to be included among the essentials for the next world.
Most sancai was produced in workshops near Luoyang, in Henan province, where the majority of early finds were made. For that reason it is sometimes called 'Luoyang Tang Sancai'. Vessels were also made in the technique—small plates with three feet, typically between eighteen and forty centimetres across, are a distinctive type, often called 'offering-trays'. These tend to have more carefully controlled decoration than the figures, though they too were made for burial rather than use.
The technique did not long outlast the dynasty. After the Tang collapsed in 907, sancai production declined sharply, though it was occasionally revived in later periods. The association between the glaze style and the Tang remained so strong that the name Tang Sancai became standard, even for pieces made centuries later in deliberate imitation.
Why it mattered then
These figures were made to accompany the dead, and their purpose was as practical as it was symbolic. The Tang elite believed the afterlife required the same support systems as earthly life: servants, animals, musicians, guards. The figures provided that retinue without the earlier practice of human sacrifice or the expense of burying actual goods that could still be used by the living. The choice of subject reveals what the Tang considered essential. Camels and horses were transport, the means by which goods moved and fortunes were made. Grooms and handlers, many modelled with Central Asian features, were the skilled labour that kept that system running. Their presence in tombs is evidence of how deeply the Silk Road economy had penetrated Chinese life. These were not distant figures from the frontier but people you would see in any major city, and their inclusion in the afterlife retinue shows they were understood as necessary. The relative affordability of sancai also mattered. Lead-glazed earthenware was cheaper than porcelain, and the moulding process allowed workshops to produce figures in quantity. That meant a wider tier of the elite could afford elaborate tomb furnishings, which in turn meant more families could participate in the display of status and piety that a well-provisioned tomb represented. The technique democratised, to a degree, a practice that had once been the preserve of the highest ranks.
Why it matters now
Sancai figures are now among the most recognisable objects from Tang China, and their appeal is not hard to understand. They are lively, individual, and they depict a society in motion—traders, animals, musicians, all captured in mid-gesture. They offer a more human portrait of the Tang than the formal court paintings or inscribed bronzes that dominate other accounts of the period. They also complicate the picture of what 'Chinese' meant in the eighth century. The Central Asian faces on the grooms are not marginal details but central to the iconography. They show an empire that was multiethnic by necessity and by design, where foreign traders were not exotic visitors but part of the infrastructure. That cosmopolitanism is easy to romanticise, but the figures record it as fact: these people were there, and they mattered enough to be included in the tomb. For museums and collectors, sancai figures have been prized since they began to be excavated in significant numbers in the early twentieth century. That demand has driven extensive looting, and the provenance of many pieces in Western collections is uncertain or absent. The problem is not unique to sancai, but it is acute: tomb goods are by definition buried, and their excavation is often illegal and unrecorded. The result is that we know these objects well as individual pieces but understand far less about the tombs they came from, the people who commissioned them, and the rituals they were part of. What survives is vivid but partial.
The surprising detail
Dealers in China and the West referred to sancai wares as 'egg-and-spinach' for their streaked green, yellow and white glazes. The nickname is more descriptive than it sounds: the lead glazes ran and pooled unpredictably during firing, and the result often does look like a plate of cooked greens. The term was trade slang, used in auction houses and among collectors, and it captures the fact that these pieces, despite their association with elite tombs, were made quickly and in quantity, with effects that were lively rather than controlled.
What is disputed
The exact dating of individual sancai figures is often uncertain, since most were excavated without proper archaeological recording. The style is associated with the Tang dynasty, particularly the period after 700, but later revivals and deliberate imitations make attribution difficult without tomb context or thermoluminescence testing.
Remember this
Tomb figures show what a culture thinks it cannot do without. For the Tang, that included Central Asian grooms and the animals of the Silk Road.
Test yourself
Why were sancai figures made in sections and assembled after the first firing, rather than modelled as single pieces?
The technique allowed workshops to produce large figures efficiently and at lower cost. Heads, torsos, and limbs could be cast in moulds and then assembled, which made it possible to create multiples with minor variations and to work at a scale that would have been difficult or impossible to achieve by hand-modelling. The method also reduced the risk of cracking during firing, since smaller sections dried and fired more evenly than large solid forms. The result was a production process that could meet the demand for elaborate tomb furnishings among a broad tier of the elite, not just the wealthiest families. The trade-off was visible joins and a loss of the uniqueness that hand-modelling would have provided, but for objects that would be buried and never seen again, that was an acceptable compromise.
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Image: bobistraveling, CC BY 2.0. Licence: CC BY 2.0. Source.