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Lot Essay
The function of tuning keys (qin zhen yao) was not well-understood until the 1983 excavation of the second-century BC tomb of the King of Nanyue, in Guangzhou, Guandong province, in which bronze tuning keys were found together with a set of tuning pegs for a qin. Qin zhen yao were used to tighten the pegs on which the strings of a qin are wound.
A variety of tuning keys are illustrated by B. Lawergren in his essay “Strings”, included in the exhibition catalogue edited by J. So, Music in the Age of Confucius, Washington, D.C., 2000, pp. 65-85. All of the tuning keys illustrated by Lawergren have various zoomorphic forms adorning their ends, including one with a bear-form finial (p. 78, fig. 3.9.3c) in the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art that is comparable in design and identical in size to the present lot. See, also, a similar but slightly smaller (8.3 cm. high) tuning key surmounted by a bear with a slit mechanism in its back that sold at Christie’s New York, 21 September 2000, lot 175.
A variety of tuning keys are illustrated by B. Lawergren in his essay “Strings”, included in the exhibition catalogue edited by J. So, Music in the Age of Confucius, Washington, D.C., 2000, pp. 65-85. All of the tuning keys illustrated by Lawergren have various zoomorphic forms adorning their ends, including one with a bear-form finial (p. 78, fig. 3.9.3c) in the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art that is comparable in design and identical in size to the present lot. See, also, a similar but slightly smaller (8.3 cm. high) tuning key surmounted by a bear with a slit mechanism in its back that sold at Christie’s New York, 21 September 2000, lot 175.