The lacquer objects and paintings on silk unearthed from Mawangdui have rich cloud, phoenix and bird patterns. These refi ned images with strong local characteristics and almost modernistic abstraction have rich cultural contents. They to a certain extent continue the images of the dragon boat, phoenix chariot and cloud carrier that flow freely on Chu paintings on silk, but they have neither been widely inherited by later generations nor entered modern designs. This paper begins with a focus on the cloud pattern of Mawangdui lacquer objects in an attempt to understand the vague space of the C