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Abstract
This thesis investigates the wugong altar sets, each consisting of a censer, two vases and two candlesticks. For the past five hundred years, the wugong were used in temples, tombs, and ancestral shrines. How did the wugong become so prevalent? While the use of altar vessels before the fifteenth century was largely eclectic, the grouping of the censer, vases and candlesticks was adopted in some important contexts and produced in imperial workshops, which enhanced the persistence, prevalence, and standardization of the altar set. In addition to their use on altars, the wugong also acquired other associations and functions that were not intended originally. For instance, the stone wugong is the Qing imperial cemeteries marked the final phase in the procession of the deceased emperor's coffin to the netherworld. The aesthetics of altar sets had also been exploited to serve spiritual and social purposes. Some elaborate altar sets were presented as gifts to deities as eternal offerings and others were presented to individuals as sumptuous votive objects. The splendor of many altar sets also made them suitable for secular display in China and abroad. In mediating spiritual, social and cultural relationships, the individual altar sets contributed to making the wugong a significant category of objects and thus warranted its persistent use. This dissertation also shows that objects with a long lineage and high artistic value often adapted to new contexts and events, which promoted the objects to acquire multivalent functions, whether they be social, cultural and political. While their multiple uses were not always documented, we may investigate those functions and the individuals whom they served by reconstructing their historical contexts.
