The First Emperor : China’s terracotta army

Major exhibition at the British Museum of the life and death of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuangdi.

The first half of the exhibition focused on the emperor’s life looking at how he unified the country both militarily, administratively and emotionally. I must admit I found this section a little bit superfluous. Although I am sure if was good to give a context to the terracotta warriors, which I am sure is what most people had come to see, the sparse nature of the artefacts made this a rather reading based section and a bit stodgy. It felt a little like a way of controlling the flow of people to the meat of the exhibition.

Talking of the meat the figures themselves were not disappointing. They were put into the context of the death of the emperor although I found myself viewing them as art artefacts in their own right. I was most struck by how different they all were. The image you get from photo’s of the tomb is of an amorphous group of figures more astonishing for their numbers that individuality, but seeing them close up you realise each not only has different clothes and hair but a different physique and build.


My favourite was the kneeling cross bow man at the start. He showed a wonderful contrast between the sheer detail of his hair and even the hob nails on his shoes and the rough work on the main moulding in which you can feel you can see the thumb work of the craftsman.

I also loved the concept that the beautiful bronze birds displayed with terracotta musicians represented real birds which the emperor had had trained to dance to music.

All in all it gave you a real sense not only of the beauty of the objects but also of the complexity of the society which they represented.

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