How far did the art develop further during the Chou dynasty?
During, the Chou Dynasty, often the shapes of the jars were more complicated than they had been before. As more and more people learnt to write, it became more common to put long inscriptions on the jars. People made special bronze jars for their ancestors, and wrote long inscriptions about their own lives, so that their ancestors and descendants would know what they had done. A lot of the jars were in animal shapes like birds and dragons. Towards the end of the Eastern Chou period, about 300 BC, artists began to create the first Chinese pictures of whole scenes with several people and a landscape, often hunting scenes.
They also continued to make jade ornaments and decorations in complicated shapes with carving on them. Pottery techniques became more complicated too, with wheel made pots being fired hotter (this makes them harder) and sometimes with a greenish glaze on the surface. It was also in the Eastern Chou period that people in China first began to make other kinds of art. Especially in southern China, people began to make things out of lacquer, the coloured red sap of the lac tree painted onto wood. They used lacquer to make beautiful light-weight boxes, dishes, and even small statuettes. And at the end of the Eastern Chou period, about 300 BC, people also began to paint scenes with people and landscapes onto silk.
