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- most impressive thus far excavated have come from the tomb of Zhang Sheng near Anyang. The Sui also seem to have introduced light-yellow to brown-glazed earthen�ware tomb figurines which sometimes had pigments painted on top of the glaze. The glaze, covering the whole figurine, was of poor quality and excavated examples exhibit flaking of the glaze. The glazed figures were made of a white buff clay and this type seems to have continued into the early years of the Tang dynasty (618-907). Some costumes and armour on Sui tomb figurines mark a major change in style from earlier dynasties. For example, the women do not wear their hair in two chignons, and are usually depicted in narrow-sleeved dresses with a high waist. The later Sui figurines also appear to be better sculpted with a trend towards realism, showing more sophistication in pose and in individual expression than earlier ones. Some figurines even have been found to have metal armatures allowing for more innova�tive postures. In short, the Sui figurines offer a brief prelude to the magnificent ceramic sculptures which occur in the next dynasty.
Following the overthrow of the Sui by the Tang dynasty in 618, China entered a golden age of economic development and became one of the wealthiest nations in the ancient world. Life for many became cosmopolitan, luxurious and rich when the Silk Road was reopened to the West and trade reached an unprecedented scale. Thousands of foreigners were coming from numerous distant lands as pilgrims, students and merchants to take advantage of the enormous economic and cultural superiority of Tang China. According to records in the Six Codes of the Tang Dynasty, more than 300 countries and regions had established friendly relations with the Tang court.
Tang burial customs were elaborate and many new varieties of tomb figurines were developed. The art of making grave figurines matured and reached its highest stage of technical and artistic development during the Tang period. Their figurines were no longer small, stiff and formal, but large and freely modelled in powerful poses with astonishing vitality and faithful attention to detail, giving the impression of action and movement. The figures produced in the early part of the Tang dynasty followed the Sui tradition and were made of fine, white buff or grey clay and occasionally red clay. Some were left unglazed and decorated with painted pigments, while others were glazed with a pale straw colour and left plain or painted with designs in red, blue, green, black and gold.
The highest achievement of tomb figurines were the large statuettes of the eighth century which are covered by a polychrome glaze, made by mixing copper, iron or cobalt with a colourless lead silicate to produce a rich range of colours from blue and green to yellow and brown. The glaze is applied thinly over a white slip and fired at 700� to 800� centigrade. This glaze, known as sancai or tri-colour glaze, is generally finely crackled and stops short of the base in a wavy, uneven line. The colours, all applied at once, tended to run together, resulting in a bizarre mixture of streaked colours. In most cases, only the body of the figurines was glazed while the head was covered with pigments. This increased the effect of realism and created a good balance between the free-running colourful glazes and the quiet pigments of the head. Many of these figurines were almost one metre in height. Most of the Tang tri�colour figurines were produced at kilns in the Tang capitals of Xian and Luoyang and later in the city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province. As evidenced by the excavated tomb of Li Feng in Fuping in Shaanxi province, tri-colour pottery vessels did occur by the second half of the seventh century, but the tri-colour tomb figurines do not appear to have become popular until the eighth century.
Tang tomb figurines can basically be divided into three main groups: humans, animals and mythical hybrids. Human figurines just prior to the Tang were slender and elongated but by Tang times the figurines had become more robust. Among the
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