A VERY RARE ARCHAIC BRONZE FINIALWARRING STATES PERIOD - HAN DYNASTY |

cast in the form of a bird head, with a large hooked beak before protruding eyes and leaf-shaped ears, the head flanked by a pair of small loops and extending to a tall cylindrical hollow socket pierced with two small apertures, the surface with malachite encrustation, wood stand (2) 

Collection of Stephen Junkunc, III (d. 1978).

Bronze finials of this type have been discovered at several locations in the far northwest regions in China, as discussed by Jenny F. So and Emma C. Bunker in the exhibition catalogue Traders and Raiders on China's Northern Frontier, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1995, p. 121, where a similar bronze bird head-form finial, attributed to 5th-4th century B.C., from the Therese and Erwin Harris Collection, was exhibited, cat. no. 38. Compare also a related bronze bird-head form finial of a smaller size, in the collection of the Crown Prince of Sweden Gustaf Adolf, illustrated in Nils Palmgren, ed., Selected Chinese Antiquities from the collection of Gustaf Adolf Crown Prince of Sweden, Stockholm, 1948, pl. 24, fig. 2; another, modeled in the form of a ram head, from the Warring States period, excavated in Guyuan city, Ningxia province, illustrated in The Guyuan Museum of Ningxia, ed., Historical and Cultural Relics from Guyuan, Beijing, 2004, pl. 33; a Han dynasty example in the form of a doe head, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bliss, exhibited in Ausstellung Chinesischer Kunst [Exhibition of Chinese Art], Berlin, 1929, cat. no. 127; and also a gold finial, cast in the form of a feline head, attributed to the Warring States period, from the Carl Kempe Collection, sold in our London rooms, 14th May 2008, lot 13.