WARRING STATES PERIOD, 5TH CENTURY BC

Details

A RARE TRIPOD WINE EWER AND COVER, HE
Warring States period, 5th century BC
The compressed globular body raised on three legs cast at the top with a taotie mask, and decorated around the sides with three slightly recessed bands cast with dissolved dragon heads reserved on a finely granulated ground, the spout cast as a feline-headed dragon with scaly neck encircled by a cowrie shell collar, the flat cover decorated en suite attached by a chain to the mouth of a small bird squatting beneath the back haunches of the beast that forms the arched handle, its curled tail at one end and its feline head at the other, with an allover pale green patina
7 5/8in. (19.3cm.) across

Provenance

Sotheby's, London, 8 February 1945, lot 150, the Collection of Lionel Edwards.
Dugald Malcolm Collection, no. A47.
Sotheby's, London, 29 March 1977, lot 15, the Collection of Dugald Malcolm.
Sotheby's, London, 12 December 1989, lot 14, the Collection of the British Rail Pension Fund.

Literature

W. Watson, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, London, 1962, pl. 51b.

Exhibited

Early Chinese Bronzes, London, Oriental Ceramic Society, 1951, no. 88.
Exhibition La Découverte de l'Asie, Hommar à René Grousset, Paris, Musée Cernuschi, 1954, no. 398.
On loan: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1978-85.
On loan: Dallas Museum of Art, 1985-88.

Lot Essay

The present wine vessel can be compared to similar excavated examples. One with a broken handle found in a Warring States hoard of bronze vessels at Gaowangsi, Fengxiang county, Shaanxi province, illustrated in Wenwu, 1981:1, no. 1, pl. 7, fig. 3 and p. 16, fig. 2(1); and another with the handle missing found in a Warring States tomb at Niaotanshan, Sihu county, Guangdong province, illustrated in Kaogu, 1975:2, pl. 4, fig. 5.

The amorphous scroll design on this vessel can be seen in close-up in a fragment of foundry debris dated late 6th-first half of 5th century BC illustrated by R.W. Bagley, 'Debris from the Houma Foundry', Chinese Bronzes: Selected articles from Orientations 1983-2000, p. 248, fig. 7.

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