[Frances Klapthor] I'm Frances Klapthor, the associate curator for Asian art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and we are looking at a large striding camel. If you don't know, camel's voices are raucous and they're very loud, and obviously this one has something to say. This large figure was made to be buried in a tomb. They were popular as representations of the means to obtain wealth as the vehicles for transporting goods for the deceased to the afterlife. [Speaker 2] The Chinese were introduced to camels as soon as their sphere of influence expanded westward towards Central Asia around the first century BCE. This one is wearing a saddle blanket with a type of pattern based on central Asian textiles. These were brought into China along the vast trading route, known as the Silk Road. It extended across Asia to Europe, Africa, and the near East. [Frances Klapthor] Strong camels could carry from 500 to 600 pounds and cover about 30 miles a day. These were the big rigs that conveyed goods across vast expanses of Central Asia.

[Aaron Henkin] This figure dates to the early eighth century. Its colors, brown, green, and white, were a special set of three color glazes that were extremely popular during the Tong Dynasty. Ceramicist Kyle Bauer explains that these glazes were applied to the clay figure before it was fired. As the kiln heated up, these low temperature glazes melted and ran down the figure. It's known as the sansai technique. [Kyle Bauer] I'm fascinated by this glaze because the artist in this sansai technique, they use the melting or the drippiness of the glaze to accentuate or highlight musculature, the curve of an object to provide a more lifelike presentation. You can see muscles and knees if you look on the shoulders, how that provides a hair-like texture that comes through the thick and thin areas that pool on this glaze. [Aaron Henkin] It's a little surprising that the element of chance, the unpredictable way the glaze is going to run and pool in the crevices creates the illusion of shadows and highlights. [Kyle Bauer] It's going to give us, the viewer, the perception that there's movement.

[Aaron Henkin] From the same period as this camel was made, there's an ancient document called Records of the Western regions that describes heavily laden camels moving across a huge, harsh expanse of Central Asia. The desert was nearly a thousand miles wide. Listen to this wonderful description and just imagine. [Frances Klapthor] There are no birds overhead and no beasts below. There is neither water nor herb to be found. At this time in the four directions the view was boundless. There were no traces either of man or horse. And in the night the demons and goblins raised fire lights as many as the stars. In the daytime, the driving wind blew the sand before it as in the season of rain.