Chinese Jin Dynasty Pottery Filial Piety Tile - Wang Wuzi

This moulded pottery tile was made during the Jin Dynasty (AD 1115 - 1234) and was most likely excavated from Shanxi province. It is made from a relatively highly-fried grey pottery. Filial piety was, and still is, an important part of Chinese culture. This tile depicts a scene from one of the twenty-four paragons of filial piety, that of Wang Wuzi:

Wang Wuzi lived in the Tang dynasty. He was absent from home for ten years, leaving his wife to look after his mother who had been ill for a while. The daughter-in-law found out that consuming the flesh of a close family member could cure the illness. Wang's wife cut off flesh from her thigh hoping to cure her mother-in-law. She was later rewarded for her filial piety by the court.

Length 24.5 cm, height 19 cm. It is in good condition and has no restoration or repair.

We have taken this version of the story from the excellent Shanxi Museum / China Institute book, "Theater, Life and the Afterlife" (ISBN 978-7-03-032940-0) a book we highly recommend for anyone interested in Song, Jin, Yuan Dynasty pottery tiles.

For information: this tile is one of many items from a late private Sussex collector we have recently acquired, several of which, including this item, we actually sold ourselves over twenty-five years ago (our original price labels with stock numbers were still on the items !).

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