figure (ritual & belief: representations)

Carved and painted wooden figure of a seated deity, the Great Emperor Bao Sheng, with his left leg horizontally across his right knee, holding in his left hand a red gourd medicine bottle and a book in the other. He wears a turquoise robe, has a beard of black hair, and appears to sit on a green rock, possibly representing jade. Next to him is a basket of herbs.The inscription, from right to left 'Yi Ling Da Di', means ‘Great Emperor who can cure people, whose medicine / prescription is efficacious.’

Part of The Louise Tythacott Collection. The Louise Tythacott Collection was compiled as the result of intensive fieldwork over several years in South China and Hong Kong. Ms Tythacott is a Chinese-speaking anthropologist and a museum curator, and was Curator of Ethnography at Liverpool Museum, who was particularly fortunate in developing contacts during the course of her work. Ms Tythacott has also made collections for the Museum of Mankind.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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