LATE SHANG-EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC

The inscription on the interior of the vessel reads Reng X Fu zuo jue pang ding, which may be translated as, ‘Father Reng X made this rectangular ding vessel’. Fangding dated from before the Anyang period of the Shang dynasty to the second half of the early Western Zhou dynasty. One type of fangding shares design elements that are similar to those found on the present vessel: a rectangular field surrounded on three sides by rows of bosses below a decorative band, and flanges at the corners to accentuate the body shape. Sometimes the rectangular field is left plain, as seen here, and sometimes it is filled with a leiwen pattern. The decorative band above is usually birds or dragons of varying types. Other late Shang-early Western Zhou fangding featuring a similar bifurcated or split snake set against a leiwen ground incorporating small roundels with raised dots above a plain rectangular field are illustrated by J. Rawson in Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. IIB, Washington, DC and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990, pp. 234-39, no. 6 and figs. 6.5-6.9. A fangding illustrated by Chen Peifen, Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Shanghai Museum, London, 1995, p. 50, no. 23, has leiwen in the rectangular field below a band of pairs of birds confronted on a flange. A fangding from the Doris Duke Collection, sold at Christie’s New York, 21 September 2004, lot 150, is very similar to the Shanghai vessel. Another fangding excavated in 1984 at Tengzhou Zhuang, Shandong province, illustrated in Zhongguo Qingtongqi Quanji - Western Zhou, vol. 6, no. 2, Beijing, 1997, p. 73, no. 75, has a plain field below a pair of kui dragons confronted on a small flange.