Meet one of the world's earliest 'football' pillows

Long before football became a global obsession, a child kicking a ball had already found his way onto a Chinese ceramic pillow.

This pillow was made during China's Song Dynasty (960–1279), and yes, as surprising as it sounds, it is made of ceramic. Its surface shows a child playing cuju, an ancient Chinese ball game often compared to modern football. The artifact is now in the collection of Henan Museum. 

Ceramic pillows were highly popular in Song China. They had appeared centuries earlier, but truly flourished in the Song, when ceramic production reached new heights. Unlike the soft pillows we know today, ceramic pillows offered comfort in a different way. Their hard, smooth surfaces helped support the neck while also bringing a welcome touch of coolness, especially in the days before electric fans and air conditioning.

As ceramic techniques advanced, Song kilns produced pillows in an astonishing range of shapes and designs. Some were rectangular, oval, animal-shaped, or even modeled after children. Their surfaces were often decorated with flowers, birds, poems, auspicious phrases, scenes from daily life and moral stories.

Part bedding, part artwork, part cultural time capsule, the ceramic pillow shows how Song artisans could turn even the most ordinary object of daily life into something elegant, expressive and enduring.