Lacquer dish on a wood core, with depiction of Cai Yongxiang saving a train, Sichuan province, China, 1966

Red lacquer dish with a heroic portrait of PLA fighter and hero Cai Yongxiang in black lacquer as decoration. A circular dish on a low footrim. The rim and foot are bound in brass. The black lacquer surface has been cut back to a ground which has then been lacquered red. This leaves a relief outline of a PLA fighter bounding forwards along a railway track with a log in his arms. He is Cai Yongxiang a hero who lost his life saving a train of Red Guards by removing an obstacle from the line. All detailing is in red lacquer. The flat style of the relief is reminiscent of woodblock prints and other graphics of the Cultural Revolution period. (Craig Clunas 17/8/90)

Purchased from Ye Changfeng

This lacquer dish dates from the period of the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976). It was made in Sichuan, a province famous in the 1960s for producing a particular style of woodblock print in the style of romantic Socialist Realism. The image on the dish, in both its subject-matter and the flat style of relief, alludes to this genre, and indicates that it may originally have been produced in graphic form. It depicts the People's Liberation Army fighter, Cai Yongxiang, who was raised to hero status when he lost his life saving a train of Red Guards by removing an obstacle from the track.

FE.6-1990