LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC

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AN ARCHAIC BRONZE WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU
LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC
The pear-shaped body cast with two small taotie masks on either side of the body, reserved on a band of diagonally arranged leiwen set between two narrow bands of bosses and interrupted by two loops attached to the rope-twist handle, the cover similarly decorated beneath an acorn-shaped finial, both the interior of the vessel and the cover cast with a three-character inscription
7½ in. (19 cm.) high

Lot Essay

The three-character inscription consists of a graph usually read as mu (shepherd), followed by Fu Yi (Father Yi).

A very similar bronze you is illustrated by R. W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1987, pp. 388-9, no. 68; and another in the collection of the Museum of Eastern Antiquities, Oxford, is illustrated by W. Watson, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, London, 1962, pl. 23a.

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