A gilt-bronze and repoussé saddle fitting, Liao dynasty

Sing's Antique Gallery, Hong Kong, 20th November 1998.

Meticulously hammered with a design of dragons chasing a flaming pearl, this gilt-bronze and repoussé fitting would have once decorated the saddle of a Liao dignitary. Although settled by the founding of the Liao dynasty in 907, the Khitan were originally nomadic, and as such, the horse was considered to be one of the most important possessions and signatures of status in Liao society, and the accoutrements of the horse, including the saddle, were often entombed with their owners. The present example, richly gilt and very carefully worked through the delicate repoussé technique, would only have been within the reach of a wealthy and important individual. Compare the current lot with a set of gilt-silver and repoussé saddle fittings, dated to 1018 or earlier, discovered from the tomb of the Princess of Chen and Xiao Shaoju at Qinglongshan Town in Naiman Banner, Inner Mongolia, included in Gilded Splendor: Treasures of China’s Liao Empire (907-1125), Asia Society, New York, 2006, cat. no. 12a-d; the Xiao Shaoju examples are decorated with birds amongst floral scrollwork, in contrast to the more regal dragon imagery of the present work. Scholar Hiromi Kinoshita speculates that the Xiao Shaoju fittings may have been produced by captured Han artisans for their new Liao masters (op. cit., p. 122), and it may be that the present fitting was made in similar circumstances.