Lot 22
22
A RARE BRONZE ELLIPTICAL VESSEL AND COVER, XU
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A RARE BRONZE ELLIPTICAL VESSEL AND COVER, XU

EARLY EASTERN ZHOU, SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD (6TH CENTURY BC)

Details
A RARE BRONZE ELLIPTICAL VESSEL AND COVER, XU
EARLY EASTERN ZHOU, SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD (6TH CENTURY BC)
Of compressed form, the vessel has a pair of loop handles with animal heads, all supported on four legs with animal heads and claws. The cover is surmounted by a flared crown finial with openwork sides, decorated on the top with an interlaced rope design. The bronze has a mottled greyish-green patina.
8.6/8 in. (22 cm.) diam. across the handles
Provenance
The collection of Rafi Y. Mottahedeh, New York, before 14 January 1981.
Sotheby's Parke Bernet New York, 4 November 1978, lot. 296.
From an important private European collection.
Special notice
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Lot Essay

A very similar elliptical covered vessel but with human-form feet in the Royal Ontario Museum is illustrated by J. So, in Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections; New York & Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Foundation & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1995, p.313, fig. 61.1. Another is illustrated in B. Karlgren, A Catalogue of the Chinese Bronzes in the Alfred F. Pillsbury Collection, 1952, Minneapolis, pp.136-137, no.50, pl.70. These vessels all bear similar flared crowns with openwork lattice decoration and ring-shaped animal-form handles with a hooked lower projection.

See also the elliptical vessel in the Collection of the Shaanxi History Museum, illustrated in Li Xixing, The Shaanxi Bronzes, Xi'an, 1994, p. 123, with human-form rather than animal-form legs.

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