A Study Of The Chinese Bird-beast Incense Burners

Incense burning has been a long time in the daily life of our ancestors.As a special kind of incense burner,the bird-beast incense burner has been impressive for its unique shape.Whether the animals exist in real life,or just be imagined by people,they have become important elements of the bird-beast incense burner.Since its appearance,the bird-beast incense burner has spanned thousands of years.It is not just only make of a certain material.Different materials can make it.So it is the epitome of ancient Chinese people’s material and cultural life.We can observe the change of the bird-beast incense burners,so that we may understand more about the development of our ancestors.I try my best to collect the datas from both archaeological excavation papers and museum collections.Various materials of the bird-beast incense burners have been observed,I want to organize them into several types,and then summarize the characteristics of different types in every dynasty.Taking the timeline as the ordinate,the development of the bird-beast incense burners is divided into three periods.Observe the shapes of the bird-beast incense burners in each period,and classify their types,and summarize the shape characteristics of different types in each period.Taking the material as the abscissa,pay attention to the differences and connections between incense burners of different materials and the same species of birds and beasts in the same period,and clarify the characteristics of the same species of birds and beasts in different periods and the differences of the same species of birds and beasts in different periods.Base on the information mentioned above,I try to investigate the rule of bird-beast incense burner evolution in the long history,analysis what is causing the change.Then I pay more attention to the two most common categories in the bird-beast incense burner which is duck(wild goose)and lion,and seek the distinction between the similar shapes but different periods.