A SMALL GILT-BRONZE GOOSE-FORM BELT HOOKWARRING STATES PERIOD - HAN DYNASTY |

finely cast in a curved 'S' profile and surmounted by a goose head hook with an elongated flat beak, its long slender neck gracefully tapering into a wide and slightly domed body set with a pair of folded spiral wings and terminating in a short tail with incised details, the underside with a circular button

C.T. Loo, New York, 9th October 1958.
Collection of Stephen Junkunc, III (d. 1978).

Bronze belt hooks of this type, modeled in the form of a goose with the distinctive long flat beak, have been excavated, including two gold belt hooks discovered from the tomb of a Han dynasty King of Chu near Xuzhou city, Jiangsu province, exhibited in Dahan Chuwang Xuzhou xihan Chuwangmu wenwu jicui [Collection of highlights of the culture relics from the Western Han dynasty King of Chu], Xuzhou Museum, 2005, p. 254; another bronze example was excavated from a Qin tomb in Fengxiang, Shaanxi province, and published in the exhibition catalogue Chinese Art of the Warring States Period. Change and Continuity, 480-222 B.C., Freer Gallery of Art, 1982, p. 92 (line drawing). Compare also a closely related Warring States bronze example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 1985.214.74; another included in the exhibition Ausstellung Chinesischer Kunst [Exhibition of Chinese Art], Berlin, 1929, cat. no. 1137; a silver Han dynasty example, from the Avery Brundage Collection, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, acc. no. B65B21; and a gold belt hook from the Carl Kempe Collection, sold in our London rooms, 14th May 2008, lot 21.