Chinese Glazed Roof Tiles

Glazed roof tiles are one of the most recognisable features of Chinese imperial architecture. They are fired clay tiles coated with a coloured glaze, giving roofs a hard, shining, water-shedding surface. In late imperial China their colour was not a matter of taste but of status.

Pan and cover tradition

Chinese tiled roofs use the same principle found at Qiaocun on the Loess Plateau around 2400-2200 BCE: concave pan tiles laid in rows, with convex or semi-cylindrical cover tiles over the joints. Over the following millennia this system was refined with decorated eave tiles, ridge tiles and ceramic ornaments. Glazing added colour and extra resistance to water.

Colour and hierarchy

By the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, imperial yellow glaze was reserved for the emperor. In the Forbidden City in Beijing, almost every roof carries yellow tiles. The palace itself shows how other colours carried meaning:

• Green tiles roof the residences of the crown prince, linked with wood and growth.
• Black tiles cover the imperial library, the Pavilion of Literary Profundity, because black was associated with water and therefore protection against fire.

Rules on colour, roof type and the number of ridge figures made a building's rank readable from a distance.

Ornament

Imperial roofs carry rows of glazed ceramic figures along the ridges. The number of figures shows the building's importance, with the Hall of Supreme Harmony carrying the most of any building in China. Large ridge-end ornaments and decorated round eave tiles complete the composition.

After the empire

After the end of the empire in 1911, glazed tiles and ridge ornaments began to appear on commercial buildings and tourist structures, and they remain popular in Chinese-influenced architecture worldwide.