LATE SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD, 6TH CENTURY BC

A dou of similar proportions and with similar flat-cast decoration, including the petals situated below the band of decoration encircling the waist of the vessel, from the Pillsbury Collection, Minneapolis Institute of Art, is illustrated by G. W. Weber, Jr., The Ornaments of Late Chou Bronzes, A Method of Analysis, New Jersey, 1973, p. 132, no. 17. See, also, the dou with similar flat-cast decoration, but lacking the petals below the band encircling the vessel, illustrated by J. So, Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, Washington DC, 1995, pp. 178-83, no. 24, where the author notes that the dou eventually replaced the gui as a food or grain container in tomb assemblages. In turn, "by the mid-Warring States period the dou had been superceded by the dui in both daily life and burial contexts."