The lacquered wooden screen excavated beside the eastern wall of the main coffin chamber had largely decayed, leaving only fragmented lacquer remnants, yet its gilded bronze components survived intact.
National Treasure 国宝
Accessories of the Lacquered Wooden Screen 鎏金漆木屏风
Bronze | Nanyue period (205-24 BC) of the Western Han Dynasty (202-9 BC) | Excavated in 1983 from the tomb of the King Wen of Nanyue, Museum of the King of Nanyue Collection. 铜器｜ 西汉南越国 （公元前205年-24年） | 西汉南越国时期 1983年南越文王墓出土 南越王博物院藏
鎏金漆木屏风 (复制品)
Archaeologists determined the screen’s original dimensions—3 meters wide and 1.8 meters high (excluding decorative finials)—through the positioning of these bronze components and created a scientific replica. Structurally, the screen featured a three-bay frontal division with two central doors that opened backward, flanked by foldable wing panels extending 90 degrees at either side.
鎏金漆木屏风 (复制品)
This Nanyue screen represents China’s earliest surviving functional Western Han screen. Its monumental scale, sophisticated collapsible design, and mythologically rich bronze fittings—showcasing unparalleled craftsmanship—led to its designation in 2002 as one of the first batch of Chinese cultural relics forbidden to be exhibited abroad.
Bronze Vermilion Bird Finial of the Screen
Its most extraordinary aspect lay in the gilded bronze parts: five finials crowned the structure—two depicting the mythical Vermilion Bird 朱雀 and three featuring double-faced beast heads 兽面纹. Each finial contained a tubular socket preserving traces of feathers, indicating they originally held pheasant plumes.
Bronze Double-faced Beast Head Finial of the Screen 双面兽首鎏金铜顶饰
The beast’s face is oval with round, protruding eyes, tall and wide nose, and the eyebrows are upturned and form the Chinese word “one”. Two horns came out of the top of the head. A round tubular socket protrudes in the middle of the forehead, and the eyebrows and ears extend outward into an intertwined cloud pattern, and a round tubular socket protrudes at each end. The body is gold-plated, and the upper two horns, eyebrows, and curled cloud patterns are all outlined with black paint. In the middle of the upper and lower lines, double-line scaly patterns are drawn, most of which have fallen off.1
Bronze Entwined Serpents Base of the Screen
Below, six symmetrically arranged bases anchored the screen: serpent-entwined bases beneath the doors showed three coiled snakes.
Bronze Snake-tamer Base of the Screen
Corner “snake-tamer” bases depicted a human figure mastering five serpents; and panlong bases integrated one panlong, two snakes, and three frogs into a single dynamic composition.2 While a smaller painted screen was previously discovered at Mawangdui Han tomb in Changsha, its crude craftsmanship identified it as a miniature model used as grave goods.
Bronze Panlong Base of the Screen 蟠龙鎏金铜托座
蟠龙鎏金铜托座
蟠龙鎏金铜托座
This pair of Pan Dragon (Coiled Dragon) bronze support were used to hold the lacquered screen on bottom corners. The support is formed by a dragon stepping on two coiled snakes that wrapped around three frogs. The dragon’s limbs squatted slightly, his ears swept back, and looked like Donkey from “Shrek”. 3
About Chinese National Treasure Series
中華國寶系列 Chinese National Treasure series feature specific artefacts and relics from museums all around the world that are historically significant to be considered a National Treasure. The series covers the 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation from Neolithic periods before the Xia dynasty (c. 2070-1600 BC) to modern day.
Footnotes:
- 正中为兽面,呈横的卵圆形,双目圆突,鼻宽而高，张口露齿,上髭中分两边，成“一”字形,末端圆卷上翘。头顶出双角。额顶正中伸出一根圆管形插座,两眉和双耳向外伸展成相互绞缠的卷云纹样,终端处各伸出一根圆管形插座。通体鎏金，顶上双角、眉毛、卷云纹均用黑漆勾勒轮廓线，上下两线条中间再绘双线的鳞状纹样,多已脱落。 Museum Information Plate, Jan 2022 ↩︎
- Nanyue King Museum (5 March 2020). “详尽图文看《南越藏珍》！（Part 9：生活器具·上篇）”. WeChat official account. Archived from the original on 27 May 2024. Retrieved 27 May 2024. ↩︎
- 原有鎏金，出土时几乎全部脱落。龙昂首曲体盘尾，四足踩在一个由两条蛇组成的支座之上。支座为双蛇合体，两蛇头部聚合到后部的正中，蛇身分向两边外旋，各卷缠一只青蛙。龙四肢微下蹲，双耳后掠，一蛙蹲伏在龙口内，蛙身半露，伸出两前肢攫住龙口的外缘。Museum Information Plate, Jan 2022 ↩︎
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