Specification
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Design: Gilt Bronze Human-Shaped Lamp
- Material: Bronze
- Size: 16.5 cm * 11.5 cm * 10 cm
Ancient Chinese Gilt Bronze Human-Shaped Lamp, made in the Western Han Dynasty, dated 172 BC.
Historian Patricia Buckley Ebrey, on page 66 of her Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1999), has this to say of the Han antique lamp:
A gilt bronze figure of a maidservant holding an oil lamp, almost 19 inches tall, was excavated from the tomb of Dou Wan, wife of one of Emperor Wu’s brothers [i.e. Prince Liu Sheng] , at Mancheng in Hebei province. This elegant gilded bronze lamp was cleverly designed to allow adjustments in the directness and brightness of the light and to trap smoke in the body.
It was one of the nearly 3,000 objects of bronze, iron, gold, silver, jade, pottery, lacquer, and silk from this huge tomb that testify to the luxury and refinement of palace life.