A small finely engraved gilt-bronze 'hunting' stem cup, Tang dynasty | 唐 鎏金銅鏨花狩獵紋高足小盃

Collection of Dr Carl Kempe (1884-1967).

Sotheby's London, 5th November 2008, lot 414.

A distinguished private collection.

Christie's London, 14th May 2019, lot 77.

卡爾肯普博士（1884-1967年）收藏

倫敦蘇富比2008年11月5日，編號414

顯赫私人收藏

倫敦佳士得2019年5月14日，編號77

Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, fig. 109.

Bo Gyllensvärd，《Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection》，斯德哥爾摩，1953年，圖109

Engraved stem cups of this form are conceived after Sassanian gold and silver prototypes. Bo Gyllensvärd in 'Tang Gold and Silver', Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 29, Stockholm, 1957, pp. 64-5, notes that the form was also copied in India and is depicted in one of the Ajanta cave paintings. Margaret Medley in Metalwork and Chinese Ceramics, London, 1972, p. 5, mentions the Chinese adapted the Persian stem cup first as a novelty and then as a vessel appropriate to religious purposes in the seventh century. She illustrates ibid., pl. 5, an engraved Tang silver cup together with a Sassanian prototype.

A closely related example was sold at Christie's London, 14th July 1980, lot 298; another, but with a band of stylised clouds on the rim, in the Avery Brundage collection, is illustrated in Jan Fontein, Unearthing China's Past, Boston, 1973, pl. 93; and a third example was sold in our London rooms, 12th December 1978, lot 240. Compare also a silver-gilt stem cup of this form decorated with a hunter on one side and a camel on the other, in the Musée Guimet, Paris, illustrated in Han Wei, Ancient Chinese Gold, Paris, 2001, pl. 378. See also a related cup, engraved with floral and bird motifs, sold in our Paris rooms, 16th June 2022, lot 87.

The motif of horsemen chasing their game with drawn arrows is a motif characteristic of the sophistication and prosperity of the height of the Tang dynasty.