A rare copper-inlaid bronze wine vessel and cover (Bianhu), Eastern Zhou dynasty, Warring States period | 東周 戰國 青銅錯銅交龍紋扁壺

Gisèle Croës, New York, March 1998. 

吉賽爾，紐約，1998年3月

This flattened oval-shaped wine flask represents the influence of the nomadic pastoralists during the 5th to 3rd centuries BC on bronze designs of the Warring States period. These nomadic peoples, who traveled with all their possessions by horse and cart, carried drinking flasks made from wood or leather which were often suspended by cords. The bronze interpretation of this drinking flask was an innovation of the Warring States period, whereby the suspension cords were transformed into strips of bronze inlaid with copper.

Here, the two oval sides are subdivided into rectangles, staggered on successive levels like brickwork, each cast with a tight 'feather curl' pattern in relief, emphasizing the creative approach taken toward surface ornamentation during the late Bronze Age. The tight spiral patterns within each rectangular panel were made with carved ceramic stamps, which were pressed into the still-soft surface of the clay mold before the vessel was cast.

It is exceptionally rare to find a bianhu with its original bronze cover. One example from the Peter Moores Foundation, now in Compton Verney, Warwickshire, was included in the exhibition China. The Three Emperors, 1662-1795, Royal Academy of Arts, London, cat. no. 203; another from the Meiyintang Collection is illustrated in Wang Tao, Chinese Bronzes from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 2009, pl. 49; a third from the Frank Arts Collection in Belgium was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 29th May 2012, lot 4136. 

The number of extant bronze bianhu surviving without their covers has led to the speculation that some of the covers may have been made from fragile organic materials, such as wood or lacquer. One example of a bianhu without a cover, excavated at Shangcunling, Sanmenxia, Henan province in 1975 and now in the Henan Provincial Museum, Zhengzhou, is illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji [Complete Collection of Chinese Bronzes], vol. 8, Beijing, 1995, pl. 143 and on the slipcase. Other examples in important museum collections include one from the Buckingham Collection, now in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (accession no. 1937.1), illustrated in Charles Fabens Kelley and Ch'en Ming-Chai, Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection, Chicago, 1946, pl. LVII; another in the Kunstindustrimuseum, Copenhagen, illustrated in the catalogue Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China, The Asia Society, New York, 1968, cat. no. 65; and a third in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (accession. no. M.75.111.3), illustrated in George Kuwayama, Ancient Ritual Bronzes of China, Los Angeles, 1976, cat. no. 46. Another example, formerly with J.T. Tai & Co., was first sold in our London rooms, 25th March 1975, lot 159, and again in these rooms, 22nd March 2011, lot 202.