These tiles can roughly be divided into three batches. The first batch is a pair of colorful sub-waisted bricks hang at the top. Second batch is horizontal rectangular bricks, painted. The rest are all from the same burial area and consist of horizontal or vertical rectangle and triangle tiles.
The rectangular bricks are the wall bricks located on the four walls of the tomb, the triangular bricks are the gable bricks located above the front and rear walls of the tomb, and the sub-waisted bricks are in the middle of the two triangles. The so-called negative pattern images are not carved with tools, but printed with wooden impression before the bricks were fired in the kiln.
The images are mainly hunting and horse training scenes showing the life of the tomb owner. Animals include dragon, phoenix, crane, wild goose, deer, dog, leopard, tiger and horse, etc.; there are also fusang trees that represent the idea of ascending to immortality. Among them, horses are particularly vivid. There are at least 15 types of horse.
You must think that the diversity of those images must depend on how many impressions there are. But the ancient craftsmen were very smart. They put several impressions together to form a new image. For example, the impressions of the monkey and the tree were designed to look like a monkey playing on the tree. The same deer has an impression of an arrow on its back. The craftsman can take advantage of the softness of the bricks before entering the kiln to erase the arrow. For the same impression of a running dog, if the craftsman turns it slightly when printing, the running direction and the angle of the head will change.
The production of these bricks is not large, and they had been popular only for a few years. Since only rich people could afford them, there are only two to three hundred bricks in existence. The Royal Ontario Museum has 108 bricks, but not all of them are on display.