A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, POU
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, POU
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PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, POU

LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC

Details
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, POU
LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC
The slightly compressed body is cast in shallow relief with a central band of taotie masks on a leiwen ground, centered by a low flange, below a narrow band of confronted kui dragons divided by three raised beast-head masks. The splayed foot has two pierced apertures above a band of addorsed birds and beast masks.
13 in. (33 cm.) wide
Provenance
Sotheby’s New York, 7 December 1983, lot 49.
Private collection, New York.
Christie’s New York, 4 June 1992, lot 179.
Private collection, Canada.
Sotheby’s New York, 20 March 2002, lot 18.

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Vicki Paloympis (潘薇琦)
Vicki Paloympis (潘薇琦) Head of Department, VP, Specialist

Lot Essay


Pou seem to have been common in the transitional period between the Erligang and Anyang periods, but appear to have become less popular in the later Anyang period, and by the Zhou dynasty were no longer being made.

A pou with similar cast decoration and similar large bovine masks cast in relief on the shoulder is illustrated by R.W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington D.C. and Cambridge, 1987, p. 334, no. 57. Also illustrated, p. 337, fig. 57.3, is another very similar pou in the Museé Cernuschi, Paris. Further comparable pou include the example illustrated in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the National Palace Museum Collection, Taipei, 1998, pp. 388-9, no. 65, and the pou excavated from Wulang Temple in Zhenggu county, Shaanxi province, illustrated in Zhongguo Qingtongqi Quanji - 4 - Shang (4), Beijing, 1998, p. 102, no. 105.

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