Reliefs are a form of sculpting where pictures are chiseled into the surface of brick or stone to create something that resembles a combination of both painting and reliefs. This particular art form was used in ancestral halls and tombs as architectural decorations, although most are found on brick walls in tombs.
Brick and stone reliefs, which emerged in the Warring States period (475-221BC), enjoyed some development in the Qin Dynasty (221-207BC) and became very popular in the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220), although they declined later on.
In the Han Dynasty, brick and stone reliefs often served as funeral offerings because they were much cheaper and easier to produce than stone carvings. What's more, these reliefs last longer than ink-painted murals and have a three-dimensional effect.
Han Dynasty brick and stone reliefs applied traditional Chinese stone engraving techniques to develop a new school of sculpting. Most of these reliefs reflect scenes of the daily life of the Han aristocracy -- their court life with gamblers and musicians, hunting and excursions -- as well as detailed scenes of peasant life during the harvest and scenes depicting artisans and craftsmen at work. The works are important to researching the architecture, lives, customs and ideology of the Han Dynasty.
Since the black clay brick bas-reliefs do not reveal the details very clearly, Chinese artists and scholars have reproduced the scenes by laying a sheet of paper on the brick and rubbing the protruding part of the brick with an ink tampon.
As a sculptural form, brick and stone reliefs form a connection between the preceding bronzeware of the Qin Dynasty and the ensuing sculptures of the Jin (265-420) and the Southern and Northern dynasties (420-581).
Due to its wide-ranging subjects and varied ways of expression, brick and stone reliefs are very valuable for academic research and artistic appreciation; they are precious materials for researching and studying customs, architecture, sculpture and painting, as well as the development of the arts in ancient China.
About the making of brick and stone reliefs
The making techniques of brick and stone reliefs are a combination of yang ke -- where the design projects from the surface; yin ke -- the opposite of yang ke; shallow embossment, etc. Most of the reliefs came from wooden molds, some were directly carved onto brick and stone and others were painted.
Square or rectangular in shape, each brick or stone relief usually formed a picture on its own, while others comprised two pictures - one located in the upper part and the other in the lower part. The relief subjects included such activities as harvesting, salt-making, picking lotus seeds, hunting as well as banquets, singing and dancing, acrobatics , outings and fairy tales. The reliefs featured a large variety of picture arrangements and simple yet vivid outlines.
The reliefs we see today mostly come from the tombs of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. For the discoveries made in the tombs of the Southern Dynasty in Central China's Henan Province and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River , the brick reliefs were mainly pieced together with several small bricks, displaying human figures and decorative patterns. Brick and stone reliefs, which were also featured in architectural garden designs built by the later generations, mostly featured a combination of embossment and round carvings.
Distribution of brick and stone reliefs in China
The scale and artistic level of a relief in a tomb reflects its owner's social position. Most of the brick and stone reliefs have been unearthed in economically and culturally developed areas abounding in plentiful stone materials, such as Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces.
As a cultural center of ancient China, Shandong Province's ruling Confucian ideas and ancient fairy tales provided the main subject matters for the reliefs, which are rich in content and themes, depicting manors, vehicles, social gatherings, hunting and war scenes, as well as views of workshops. Natural scenes with birds, animals, fish, worms, the sun, moon, stars, mountains and trees, as well as architectural designs and patterns, were drawn on the stones to add to their beauty.
The reliefs of Nanyang , Henan Province, mainly depict figures from Chinese fairy tales, lucky birds and animals, and moon pictures. Most of these reliefs were carved horizontally to create a sense of movement.
The reliefs of Sichuan Province are rectangular in shape and some of their subjects were drawn vertically. Two such examples include the historical stories "Return the Jade Intact to the State of Zhao" and "Jingke Killing the Qin Emperor," both of which are about 2 meters long. Other reliefs in Sichuan at 11 meters in length portray vehicles, acrobatics, dance performances, farming and cooking scenes and historical stories. Compared to reliefs in other Chinese regions, the ones in Sichuan are simpler, livelier and more natural. In the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-AD24), the walls, gates, arches and tablets in rulers' tombs and the walls in their ancestral halls were all stone and brick. Here, the reliefs were painted red. But before the paint was applied, the stones were only slightly polished to retain a free and natural beauty.
Big discovery in Chongqing Municipality
Archaeologists in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality unearthed more than 20 pieces of brick reliefs from a tomb of the Eastern Han Dynasty in January 2004.
Lin Bizhong, a noted archaeologist from the Chongqing Municipal Archaeological Team, said that this was the first time bricks with molded designs had ever been unearthed in Chongqing.
Such tomb bricks had only been excavated in Chongqing and are now under State protection.
Lin acknowledged that since the brick-and-stone-structured tomb was robbed, the only valuable items that remained were the brick reliefs.
Designs on the bricks include horse-drawn carriages accompanied by guards, the image of Fuxi (China's ancient sun god), and images of high-nosed and hollow-eyed people, who may have been from various Chinese ethnic groups or foreigners.
According to experts, designs of horse-drawn carriages accompanied by guards indicate that the tomb owner was someone of high social status; bricks with the image of Fuxi are important materials for studying the religion and culture of the period; and the images of foreigners reflected cultural exchanges between the East and West in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Archaeologists also found traces of red hues on the bricks, which, they say, may be traces of color painting.
Brick reliefs: A clear portrait of Han society
 An imprint of an Eastern Han Dynasty brick depicting two mythical creators of the world, Fuxi, and his sister Nuwa. The figures have snake-shaped bodies and are holding geometrical instruments, with the sun and moon on their heads.
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 Dragons and lions had already developed during the Warring States period. During the Han Dynasty they became a very popular motif. These two examples are playing with a jade disk, a symbol of heavenly contact with the owner of the disk.
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 Another picture that shows mythical tradition is this rubbing of a brick from the Eastern Han Dynasty. These two birds with a man's head symbolize the moon and the sun. On the moon lives a toad, on the sun a crow.
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 This rubbing of an Eastern Han Dynasty stone has a special religious background. Especially during the Han dynasty, the veneration of the so-called Mother Queen of the West was very popular among many social groups, peasantry as well as upper class. In this picture, we see the mythical animals toad, crow and hare and people making chariot wheels.
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 A red colored rubbing of an Eastern Han stone showing a Lord on an excursion, accompanied by his servants. The rubbing scholar has added a poem.
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 Even the architecture of the Han Dynasty can be reconstructed because a brick and its rubbing of a city gate have survived. The gate is flanked by two mighty towers with watching platforms at its top. On the roof of the gate we see a phoenix, a symbol of happiness, luck and longevity. We also find models of towers, palaces and farms in the tombs of the Han nobility that are scattered all over China .
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 An item that is found in tombs and can be seen in pictorial art, is the one horse chariot of the Han dynasty. It was used by an aristocrat and the chariot leader. A halfmoon shaped axes indicates the rank of the owner of this chariot. Brick and rubbing are both conserved.
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 We see not only the life of the nobility but also the daily work the peasants had to do. This rubbing of an Eastern Han brick shows two men shooting ducks and harvesting peasants.
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 A further example of a picture that shows a scene in daily life is this rubbing of an Eastern Han brick, demonstrating the work in a butcher's shop, where we see meet being chopped, hanged up, dried and boiled.
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 As a source of Han social history, this picture of a store can be used as an ideal illustrative material. The trader sells sheep and a kind of wine.
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 The period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties was dominated by warriors of Chinese and Non-Chinese origin. This brick shows a cavalry soldier with his heavily armored horse.
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 Southern Dynasties court ladies. On this brick we can admire the costumes, hair fashion and the large shoes of the 5th century dames ид la mode.
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