Since have posted a cup,will follow with a bowl from the Golden Age of the Tang Dynasty of China.Note the following:
01.This is a gilded gold bowl and not a gold alloy bowl.The bowl's design and shape was completed before gilding with amalgam of gold in mercury. Well preserved gilded items will look brighter than antique gold alloy items.
02.The base alloy for gilding is silver and copper.
03.The bowl shape is hammered out and the swirling outer design is chased out. The outer design is unusual as uses swirling lines to segment the bowl and each segment is chased out a bird or an animal with a foliage branch beneath and the background is chased with miniature punched circles.
04.The four characters @ bottom are Tai Tang Zhen Guan which is the reign period of Tai Zong(Li Shimin) of the Tang Dynasty.
Finally the last image is another bowl in my collection with similar motifs of animals,birds and flowers but with repousse lotus petal pattern which is Buddhist in origin and vaguely similar to that found in Hejiacun,Xian in 1970.
