So anyway, here's a fun ceramic piece that shows a pig in a pen and also a latrine. Most people would not think to put a latrine in their artwork, but this artist did. And I guess this is how people really had their latrines made, so that you went up to the little outhouse, and you squatted there and did you pooping or peeing. Then maybe the pig would eat some of it. Or not. I'm not sure what all pigs eat, but I believe they have a varied diet. Anyway, the stuff that fell down from the latrine, plus some of the stuff in the pig pen was probably used on the fields to make the crops grow better.
I like this next one a lot because it has a dog in it. And there's also a man, and he is threshing some grain. Then he will grind up the grain on the round mill wheel thing. Meanwhile, the dog is watching for mice or rats, so he can chase them away from the grain.
In this one, a man is looking over his flock of sheep. Except that he's riding one of the sheep, which seems like a strange thing to do. Mom told me that the card for this artwork said the man was riding a sheep so that he could get a better view of the other sheep. This seems like a dumb explanation because (1) sheep are too small to hold up a person, and (2) there are so few sheep in the pen that it would be easy to get a look at them all by just climbing up on the wall. So my theory is that maybe this is really a young boy who is riding a sheep because his parents wouldn't buy him a pony, which is what happened to Mom when she was a kid because her parents also would not buy her a pony. Except that she didn't have any sheep to ride either.
Here is a wall panel with two tigers and a horse.
And in this same panel, there is a man with a bird following him around. The man has shoes with curled-up toes, like the kind Santa's elves wear. And the bird might be a peacock or some other kind of bird that is all fancy and proud of how beautiful it looks.
Here are two storks with something in between them that might be another type of bird or else a baby stork.
These are tigers with very swirly stripes. And under each tiger there is another animal, which at first I thought was a rabbit. But then I looked some more, and I decided it was an antelope or deer or something like that because these animals seem to have long legs with hooves at the ends of them. So why are these animals under the tigers? Are they some prey that the tigers killed and will now eat? Or are the tigers protecting the animals for some strange reason? This is a true mystery which, sadly, was not explained on the card that talked about the art.
I really like this ox and his cart. His harness has big tassels that are totally stylish and cool. And the cart wheels have those big, knobby things that are also very cool. This ox cart would have been put in a tomb so that the person buried there would have a way to get around in the next world.
This is a ritual wine vessel, made out of bronze. Of course, the best thing about it is the lid handle, which looks like a dog. At least that's what Mom and I think. When Mom saw this wine vessel at the gallery, she asked one of the docents what kind of animal was on top of it, and the docent said she didn't know. But she did agree that it looked sort of like a dog.
Here is a Chinese bell, except that usually there would be a whole set of them, hanging from a bar. And they would be different sizes, so you could have different pitches. These bells are rung by hitting them and not by shaking or swinging them.
This is the last one I'm going to show you today, and what it is is a model of a tower, maybe two and a half feet tall, and it would go into a tomb, probably to give the dead person someplace to live. In this tower, you can see one person standing on the level just above the front doors. The tower might be a model of the house the dead person used to live in, or it might be the kind of house he wished he had lived in.
We don't know if this person had a dog or not, but I think this house would be a fine one for a dog to live in!
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