[Hangzhou Museum] Southern Song Dynasty Deer-Patterned Brick

This clay brick is blue-gray in color and rectangular in shape. The front of the brick is decorated with two cloud-like patterns, symmetrically distributed on the left and right, and within the pattern is a deer in bas-relief. The two deer are facing each other in a kneeling position, with their backs turned and their ears slightly thrown back. The deer are vivid and lifelike.

"Deer (simplified Chinese: 鹿; pinyin: lu)" has the same pronunciation as "official’s salary in feudal China (simplified Chinese: 禄; pinyin: lu)” in Chinese, which implies auspiciousness, longevity, and high post with matched salary, hence, deer is viewed as a symbol of auspiciousness and is much loved. The deer motif was also a common kind of decorative motif in ancient China, and was widely used in paintings, jade ware, bronze ware, and porcelain during the Southern Song Dynasty.

This brick with deer patterns was unearthed in 1995 at the Hangzhou Cigarette Factory in Wansongling. The Hangzhou Cigarette Factory is located within the scope of the ruins of the Southern Song Imperial City. After multiple excavations in the mid-to-late 1990s, a large number of important cultural relics such as Southern Song porcelain, coins, and architectural components were unearthed, and important relics such as the official buildings of the Three Departments and Six Ministries (the primary administrative structure in imperial China from the Sui Dynasty to the Yuan dynasty) and the Imperial Street of the Southern Song Dynasty were discovered. Judging from the available unearthed material, the deer-patterned brick housed in the Hangzhou Museum is relatively rare among the various architectural components unearthed from the Southern Song Imperial City site. Due to the lack of unearthed material, its specific function needs to be further investigated.