Cocoon jar

Cocoon jars or Cocoon-shaped jars are Chinese funerary pottery vessels, belonging to the period of the 1st millennium BCE.^[1] The shape is similar to the Cypriot Barrel-shaped jugs, as is generally the decoration, with vertical bands across the breadth of the vessels. The earliest type of cocoon-form jar in China dates to the Western Zhou period (99-771 BCE), either in ceramic or in bronze. The Qin dynasty period has many of them, particularly in relation with the Mausoleum of the First Emperor.^[1] It has been suggested that the Chinese obtained this design from nomadic people, especially the Rong and Di cultures, through the medium of the steppes of Central Asia.^[2]

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  Western Han dynasty cocoon vessel (206 BCE-8 CE).
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  Cocoon vessel, Han dynasty
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  Cocoon-shaped vessel, Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE)
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  Eastern Han coccon jar, 1st century CE
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  Cocoon-Shaped Jar, Han dynasty, Metropolitan Museum of Art.^[3]