China, Tang dynasty, 618 – 906 AD
Height: 21 1/2 inches, 54.5 cm

A pottery figure of a groom, standing on a rectangular base, his legs spread apart and his right foot turned outwards. He has both hands raised, as if pulling on a rope tether. He wears a knee-length overcoat with upturned collar and a wide lapel. The coat is belted just below his stomach and suspended from the belt, on his hip, is a small leather pouch. He wears high boots with upturned, pointed toes. On his head is a close fitting, double peaked cap. His full beard, moustache and bushy eyebrows are prominent features of his face, as are the well-detailed nose, ears and bulging eyes. The grey pottery is almost completely covered in a layer of white slip, over which the original pigments have been applied: orange and green for the coat, pink for the face and hands, red for the lips and black for the hat and belt.

This fine pottery figure represents a groom of Central Asian extraction, perhaps from Persia or Arabia. A glazed figure of a groom with similar facial features was included in a recent exhibition at the British Museum, and is described as “…Central Asian, possibly a Sogdian” 1. Ezekiel Schloss has described the type as Uighur, a Turkish tribe which settled in Turfan in the ninth century AD 2. During the Tang dynasty, intensive travel between China and Central Asia on the Silk Road resulted in about a quarter of a million foreigners living in and around the capital Chang’an 3. The present figure is beautifully observed and modelled, and has a particularly lively stance, finely detailed facial features and expression, and the belted coat gives the impression of slightly straining to contain his bulk. His raised hands originally held a rope tether, to which an animal - most probably a camel or a horse – was attached. His self-confident stance is distinctly un-Chinese and singles him out as a foreigner.

Pottery models of grooms with this high degree of modelling and detail are rare. A comparable figure is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London4 and several glazed and unglazed examples are in the Morse Collection, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 5.

1 See: Gilded Dragons, Buried Treasures from China’s Golden Age, by Carol Michaelson (London 1999), no. 47, pp. 87-88.
2 See: Foreigners in Ancient Chinese Art by Ezekiel Schloss (China Institute in America, New York 1969) no. 8
3 See: T’ang Pottery & Porcelain, by Margaret Medley (London 1981) p. 55.
4 Ibid. plate 46.
5 See: Spirit and Ritual, The Morse Collection of Ancient Chinese Art, by Robert L. Thorp and Virginia Bower, (The Metropolitan Museumof Art, New York 1982) no. 42, 44 and 47, pp 70-75.