Chinese archeologists recently discovered a batch of gold and silver-plating porcelains made in the Liao Dynasty (916 to 1125) which demonstrate skillful gold and silver plating techniques.
　　
　　This is the first time China has found such ritual vessels of the Liao Dynasty, experts say, and they are of high value for collection as well as artistic and historical studies.
　　
　　The technology to produce gold and silver-plating porcelains can be dated back to Tang Dynasty (618-907) in China. The patterns are specially designed for each vessel.
　　
　　The vessels are decorated with dragon and phoenix patterns and with styles popular in the ancient Tang and Liao dynasties. They have been carved so vividly that no parallel can be found today, according to archeologist Han Wei, who went to the exhibition house several times to study these vessels.
　　
　　Those vessels have been collected in Bogu house, a nongovernmental antique collection place in Wenzhou City, east China‘s Zhejiang Province.
　　
　　Complex arts and crafts were employed when making those vessels, like cutting, enchasing, gold-plating and mould pressing, bringing shining decorative effects to the vessels.
　　
　　"Such a large amount of vessels of high class and quality couldn‘t be produced by private workshops", Han said. "The royal workshops for gold and silver plates should be large in scale in the middle and late Liao Dynasty."
　　
　　According to Han, in the 1990s, about 400 ritual vessels of the Liao Dynasty were found and traded to Europe privately, which were made from pure gold and silver.
　　
　　But in middle and late Liao Dynasty, the government couldn‘t afford the high cost of such ritual vessels. Instead, they plated porcelain with gold and silver by various crafts to make ritual vessels for fetes. This explained the appearance of the plated ritual vessels, said Han.
　　
　　Han concluded that those vessels were buried underground after fetes. Some of such vessels were found in recent years. But they were traded privately in or out of China without being reported to the government. That is the main reason why gold and silver-plating vessels were barely found before.
　　
　　Han‘s study suggests that such vessels were probably buried in north China‘s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
　　
　　(Xinhua News Agency December 12, 2005)