Important Chinese Art
Important Chinese Art
AN ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL (ZUN), LATE SHANG / EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY
Auction Closed
September 23, 08:35 PM GMT
Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
AN ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL (ZUN)
LATE SHANG / EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY
商末 / 西周初 青銅饕餮紋尊
cast with a short slightly splayed foot supporting a globular body surmounted by a trumpet neck, the sides of the belly cast with three taotie masks, their horns, jaws, and other features abstractly rendered in low-relief hooked curls and the hemispherical eyes emerging in high relief, a narrow band of leiwen and bosses above the angled shoulder interrupted by three raised ram masks aligned with the taotie masks below, the foot and lower neck each cast with two parallel string-relief bands, the green patina mottled with various tones of green and pale blue encrustation
Height 8⅛ in., 20.5 cm
Joseph Chan, Hong Kong, 1980.
Hong Kong Private Collection.
來源
Joseph Chan，香港，1980年
香港私人收藏
Archaic bronze zun of this flattened form are discussed by Robert W. Bagley in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington D.C., 1987, pp 278-9, where the author notes that this particular form differs significantly from the Anyang shouldered zun, and is more similar to pre-Anyang versions. Bagley thus suggests that it could represent an earlier pre-Anyang shape, or one that was revived at the end of the Anyang period. He further proposes that these shouldered zun are likely to have been produced in provincial centers, as evidenced in the rendering of the birds flanking the taotie masks, which he compares to the birds on a fang zun, acc. no. 186, in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, likely cast in the Yangzi region.
This piece bears close resemblance to a shouldered zun unearthed in Qingjian, Shaanxi province, and illustrated in Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtong qi [Bronzes of Shang and Zhou dynasties unearthed in Shaanxi province], Beijing, 1979, col. pl. 5.
See also a shouldered zun of similar form but with birds on the shoulder, unearthed in Huixian, Henan province, illustrated in Zhongguo qingtong qi quanji [Complete Collection of Chinese Bronzes], vol. 1, Beijing, 1996, pl. 120; one with a slightly taller foot, sold in these rooms, 4th December 1984, lot 11; and another with a taller and flared foot, from the collection of Hans Juergen von Lochow, illustrated in Gustav Ecke, Sammlung Lochow: Chinesische Bronzen, Beijing, 1943, pls VIIa-c; and sold in our London rooms, 7th December 1993, lot 11.