A FACETTED SILVER CUP

the body of octagonal shape resting on a short flared octagonal foot, finely chased and engraved with a large phoenix dancing on a nest of leaves amidst an overall design of formal scrolling foliage, set with large curled leaves on a finely punched ground and bordered by two narrow bands of sawtooth pattern, the foot similarly embellished with a scrolling vine, the sides set with a ring-shaped handle with a tab pointing downwards

Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1954-55, cat. no. 104.

Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, pl. no. 104.

Bo Gyllensvärd, 'T'ang Gold and Silver', Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 29, 1957, pl. 9c, figs. 24b, 63f, 95e.

Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, The Museum of Art and Far Eastern Antiquities in Ulricehamn, Ulricehamn, 1999, pl. 109.

For an example of an octagonal silver cup see one excavated in 1982 at Xi'an, illustrated in Han Wei and Christian Deydier, Ancient Chinese Gold, Paris, 2001, pl. 377; another example is in the Shaanxi History Museum, published in Zhongguo  jin yin boli falangqi quanji, vol. 2, Shijiazhuang, 2004, pl. 5; and a third vessel, from the Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum, Kansas City, was included in the China Institute in America exhibition Early Chinese Gold and Silver, China House Gallery, New York, 1971, pl. 49.