Tomb jar

This tall slender tomb jar from the Southern Song dynasty is one of eight such elaborately decorated vessels that Freer displayed as pairs in the Peacock Room in Detroit. He purchased this example from the New York gallery of Yamanaka and Company, and he was told it and other "specimens of this kind" had been "recovered from ancient Buddhist tombs" in Korea. It is now known to be Chinese in origin and to date to the thirteenth century. Originally an accoutrement of burial in both China and Korea, it would have been paired with another jar of the same shape, both of which would have held funeral offerings of grain meant to assist the deceased in the afterlife.