SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD, 6TH CENTURY BC

Similar fu have been excavated in Central China, in the region of Henan and Anhui. A very similar example from Huangchuan in Henan province is illustrated in Historical Relics Unearthed in New China, Beijing, 1972, pl. 61; another from Xincheng, also in Henan, and dated late 6th or early 5th century BC, is illustrated by W. Watson, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, pl. 56b; and another with a twenty-character inscription, excavated at Gushi, Henan, in 1978, is illustrated in Chongguo meishu quanji; gongyi meishu bian; gingtongqi, vol. 5, Bronzes (2), Beijing, 1986, p. 24. Two others, with similar six-character inscriptions, were excavated from the early 5th century BC tomb of the Marquis of Cai at Shouxian, Anhui: one of them exhibited in Beijing 1958, and illustrated in Wu sheng chutu zhonggao wenwu zhanlan tulu, Beijing, 1958, pl. 44; the other included in the Exhibition of Archaeological Treasures Excavated in the People's Republic of China, Tokyo, 1973, no. 10.
Compare, also, three similar fu in Western collections: two of them illustrated by G.W. Weber, The Ornaments of the Late Chou Bronzes, Rutgers University Press, 1973, pl. 2, from the Buckingham Collection in the Art Institute of Chicago, and pl. 3, from the Avery Brundage Collection in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the third illustrated in the Catalogue of the Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, 1970, no. 7.

The development of this vessel form is illustrated in line drawings by Guo Baojun, A Comprehensive Study of the Shang and Zhou Bronze Vessel Groups, Beijing, 1981, p. 139, fig. 34. The present vessel is representative of the third of the five stages, which is attributed to the middle Spring and Autumn period.