A RARE ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER (YOU), LATE SHANG / EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY

This lot has been withdrawn

Lot Details

Description

A RARE ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER (YOU)

LATE SHANG / EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY

商末 / 西周初青銅牛首紋卣

the pear-shaped body of oval section, crisply cast in high relief with a pair of taotie masks, each with large round bulging eyes and protruding upturned horns centered by a raised hooked flange, below two registers around the neck with two pairs of birds above two pairs of snakes, all against a leiwen ground, the narrow sides cast with further hooked flanges, the neck set with a swing handle cast with cicadas and elongated kuei dragons terminating in high-relief bovine heads, all supported on a tall foot decorated with a band of dragons, the domed cover similarly cast with a pair of taotie masks on leiwen ground divided into four sections by hooked flanges above two pairs of confronting birds flanked by a pair of tabs, all surmounted by a tall mushroom cap finial with pendent cicadas, the surface with malachite encrustation (2)

Height 10¼ in., 26 cm

Please note, lot 574 has been withdrawn from this sale. 請注意，拍品574現已撤拍。

Acquired in Hong Kong in the early 1970s.

來源

1970年代初購於香港

This richly decorated you is notable for the crisp high-relief casting, which effectively provides more surface area to adorn with scrolling designs. It belongs to a rare group of you which feature the swing handle stretching from the front to the back rather than from side to side. The horn-shaped flanges echo the horns of the bovine heads of the handles and would have created a dramatic silhouette during the ritual ceremonies.

A closely related you was sold in these rooms, 21st-22nd September 2005, lot 147; and a much larger example, excavated from Mianling, Wuming county, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji [Complete collection of Chinese archaic bronzes], vol. 4, Beijing, 1998, pls 165-7, and again in Robert Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington D.C., 1987, p. 377, fig. 64.6. Although it has been attributed to the late Shang period, Bagley compares it to a you without a handle in the Sackler Collection (originally sold in these rooms, 14th November 1963, lot 266), and suggests that handled you of the present type may date from the Zhou period. Compare also several you cast with similar overall decoration but with variations in the taotie masks published in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji, op. cit., one in the Suichuan County Museum, Jiangxi province, pl. 164, another in the Qishan County Museum, Shaanxi, pls 168-9, and a third in the Shanghai Museum, pl. 170.

See also two vessels, but cast with less prominent flanges and attributed to the Shang dynasty, one excavated at Jiajiacun, Qishan county, Shaanxi province, illustrated in Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi [Bronzes of Shang and Zhou dynasties unearthed in Shaanxi province], vol. 1, Beijing, 1979, pl. 24, and again in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji, op. cit., pls 168-9; and another included in the Ching Wan Society Millennium Exhibition, Taipei, October 2000, cat. no. 110.