Artisans and Workshop Life in Han China: Skills, Labour and Production

From the Western Han through the Xin interruption and Eastern Han, between 202 BCE and 220 CE, craft production took place across a large and varied empire. Artisans made household utensils, farm and building tools, clothing, weapons and luxury goods. Some worked within families, making goods for use at home or sale; others worked for private businesses, local authorities or the imperial government. The materials, skills and conditions of work varied, and government involvement in certain industries changed over time.

Craft work formed one part of everyday economic life in Han communities. Rural households combined farming with making goods, and some earned coin by selling homemade wares. At the same time, specialized workshops could bring many workers together. Government control of iron and salt, in particular, rose and fell during the dynasty, so the relationship between private makers and public institutions was not fixed.

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Households, private businesses and government workshops

Household production was closely tied to family needs and local exchange. Rural women wove clothing for their families, while households could sell homemade goods in urban markets. Silk production also took place on small farms and on larger estates. On family-run estates, women of the household and female servants worked in weaving and silk production. These activities were part of a broader pattern in which a household might produce goods for its own use while also seeking income from trade.

Private enterprises operated alongside household makers and public workshops. Ceramics, for example, were produced by private businesses as well as local government agencies. Private production also continued in other crafts, including lacquerware. Complex lacquer manufacture could divide the work among specialists in preparing, coating and decorating the object.

The central government maintained specialized workshops under the Minister Steward, an official whose ministry managed the treasury and the emperor’s private finances. The Office of Arts and Crafts produced items such as weapons, bronze mirrors and vessels. The Office of Manufactures made less costly weapons, utensils and armour. Separate weaving houses supplied textiles and clothing for the emperor and royal family: the Weaving House of the East was abolished in 28 BCE, while the Weaving House of the West continued under a new name. Workshops in commanderies, or local administrative areas, produced silk and embroidered fabrics, precious-metal goods and weapons.

Workshop labour did not all have the same status. Government workshops used state-owned enslaved people, convicts and workers performing compulsory service, as well as skilled craftspeople hired for pay. Skilled hired workers were described as well paid. Inscriptions on some surviving lacquerware and metal objects record the date of manufacture, the workshop, supervisors and individual makers. Such labels reveal a chain of responsibility within at least some production settings, from the people who made an object to those who oversaw its completion.

Pottery for homes, buildings and burials

Potters turned clay into domestic wares and utensils, as well as construction materials such as bricks and roof tiles. Ceramic objects also served as funerary goods, including figurines and tiles used in tombs. The range of uses brought pottery into everyday life and into the preparation of elite burials.

Han potters worked with kilns whose design had developed beyond earlier forms. Larger kiln chambers, longer firing tunnels and improved chimneys allowed grey pottery kilns to exceed 1,000°C. Hard pottery made from dense clay found in the south was fired at still higher temperatures. These differences in clay and firing conditions meant that pottery production was not identical across the empire.

Glazing also changed during the period. Brown-glazed ceramics were made by the middle of the Western Han and fired at about 800°C. Green-glazed wares became popular in the Eastern Han. The classification of some Eastern Han greenish ceramics as early celadon remains disputed.

Iron and bronze: furnaces, tools and state control

A blast furnace heated ore with fuel while a blast of air maintained the fire, producing high-carbon pig iron. Remelting allowed metal to be poured into moulds for cast objects. Refining reduced its carbon content, making iron less brittle and more suitable for hammering; further control produced steel. Workers therefore had to match the material’s composition and treatment to the tool or weapon they wanted to make.

Operating furnaces demanded sustained work, especially in moving air through the fire. In 31 CE, Du Shi, an administrator in Nanyang, introduced a water-powered mechanism to work the bellows of blast and cupola furnaces. It replaced some of the intensive manual effort previously needed to drive them. This use of water power linked mechanical equipment to the practical work of smelting.

The resulting iron goods served farms, building sites, workshops and homes. Tools included ploughshares, hoes, sickles, axes, adzes, hammers, chisels, saws and nails. Iron also became common in household objects such as cooking pots, stoves, scissors and needles. Military requirements differed from many domestic ones: cast iron was commonly used for household tools and implements, while weapons made of wrought iron or steel were preferred for their greater durability. Bronze remained in use for mirrors and other objects, and copper or bronze alloys were used for coinage.

Iron production was also an object of state policy. Emperor Wu’s government brought the iron industry under state control in 117 BCE. The monopoly was abolished in 44 BCE and restored in 41 BCE. The central government relinquished it again in the Eastern Han, although Emperor Zhang briefly reinstated central control from 85 to 88 CE. At other times, production involved local government and private makers. These changes affected who controlled production and the supply of goods, but they did not make every ironworker a state employee.

Silk, hemp and the work of making cloth

Textile work ranged from household weaving to specialized government production. Silk depended on raising silkworms, while cloth-making turned fibres into woven fabric. The surviving Han evidence gives a glimpse of equipment used in this work: a text from 15 BCE describes a belt drive operating a device that wound silk fibres onto bobbins for weaver’s shuttles. This was a practical link between preparing thread and weaving cloth.

A loom held one set of threads taut as the warp. The weaver passed another thread, the weft, across them with a shuttle and packed it into place. Lifting selected warp threads made an opening for the shuttle; changing the selection created the interlacing that held the cloth together. Preparing even thread and controlling its tension mattered to the finished fabric.

Women did much of the household textile work documented for the period. Rural women wove clothing for family use, and women on larger estates, together with female servants, also made cloth and silk. Silk was valuable, while poorer people commonly wore garments made of hemp. Commandery workshops made silk and embroidered fabrics, and the imperial weaving houses supplied clothing and textiles for the court.

Cloth was not only worn. Lengths of silk could serve as a monetary standard, and silk textiles formed part of payments to officials and rewards to deserving people. Soldiers’ payrolls also included bundles of plain silk. Thus textile workers produced material that could function as clothing and as a means of payment, connecting workshop output to household needs, state service and wider exchange.

Lacquerware and the organization of skilled labour

Lacquer was made from tree sap applied in successive thin layers over a prepared core, often wood. Each coat had to cure before further work, gradually producing a hard surface. Pigments supplied colour and makers added painted or incised decoration. Shaping the core, preparing the surface, coating and decorating required different skills, which larger workshops could divide among workers.

Inscribed Western Han cups found at Noin Ula in present-day Mongolia identify workshops, dates and supervising officials. They connect a finished luxury vessel with a production office and its responsibility for the work. Such inscriptions show how government manufacture was accounted for as well as how widely its products could travel.

For the wider setting, see Work, Learning and Leisure in Han China: Community Life from 202 BCE to 220 CE.