When Yang Jian, a member of the northern aristocracy, made himself emperor in 581AD, he established the Sui dynasty and reunited China after 264 years of division. His dynasty lasted only 37 years, but it was instrumental in laying the foundations for the long and glorious Tang era that followed. During this short period, the grand canal was built at great human cost, linking Hangzhou in the south to Luoyang and the Yellow River valley in central China, and thence to Beijing in the north, a system of waterways fully 2,000km in length. This served to encourage the settlement, integration, and economic growth of the south in the following period, binding it to the rest of the country for good.

In ceramics, the Sui was a transitional period between the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Tang. High-fired celadons of the previous era metamorphosed into porcelain through purification of the kaolin body and reduction in the iron content of the glaze. A relatively low iron content fired in a reducing atmosphere produced the “straw glaze”, a delicate, glassy, transparent glaze which varied in color from the desirable straw-yellow to a rather startling shade of light green. Applied to the tomb figurines of the Sui and early Tang periods and fired raw (ie. one single firing for body and glaze), it had a characteristically fine crackle, and tended to flake off the buff-white porcelainous stoneware body. This last resembles the behaviour of celadons of the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, and was due to the differential contraction of the glaze and the underlying body during cooling. Another peculiarity of straw-glazed figures not seen in other ceramics is the propensity for the glaze to pool in a “ledge” half an inch above the base of the figurine. The lower side of this ledge is characteristically encrusted with white quartz-like crystals. This is presumably due to pieces being placed in sand to be fired, the sand turning the glaze away from the base of the figure, and partially fusing to form adherent crystals of silica.

Furthermore, these are the only glazed figurines which have over-painting in pigments (in contrast to Yueh ware and Sancai figurines whose glaze surface is left unenhanced).

Most figures are of women with upswept, flat-topped chignons, and high-waisted dresses flowing down to a straight, slightly flaring skirt. However, there appears an endless variation in female costume with multivarious waist heights and styles of jacket, evidence of the rapid acceptance of Central Asian styles as they arrive via the Silk Road, setting a trend for the Tang attitude to fashion. The women are depicted engaged in all the work of a great estate, winnowing grain, tending to a stove, carrying a shovel, and so forth. There are groups of musicians, dancers, court ladies bearing vases, boxes, bottles, dishes, incense burners, and trays of cups, and the slim, imperious, aristocratic beauties who are to become the epitome of glamour in the early Tang. Their long skirts are generally painted with vertical red stripes over the straw glaze in a style already depicted in Northern Wei pottery figurines, and continued into the Tang period as seen in a painting by Yan Liben showing the Tang emperor Taizong being borne on a litter by a bevy of women into the presence of a Tibetan envoy come to fetch a Chinese princess for his master. Figurines also depict male and female riders, pairs of civil and military officials, guardian animals, caparisoned horses, and well-laden camels. These are richly painted, the officials with hair and beards and red and green brocaded patterns on their clothing, and the horses with trappings and rich saddle cloths, using the straw glaze as a background. As we move into the transitional period between the Sui and the Tang dynasties, the women gain the high “cockscomb” chignon seen in so much of Tang statuary. Straw-glazed pieces are replaced by Sancai tomb figures soon after onset of the Tang dynasty.

These exquisite figurines are great works of art, and also give us a good picture of aristocratic life of the period.