Ritual Hammer

This hammer, finely worked in the difficult damascene technique of inlaying gold and silver decoration, draws on an archaic vocabulary of Chinese designs and an ancient seal-script style reign mark that records its creation in the workshops of the early fifteenth-century Ming-dynasty emperor Yongle. Hammers such as this are used in rituals to drive pegs, delineating the ritual space and symbolically controlling both internal and external hindrances to spiritual accomplishment.