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Lot Essay
Music was of great importance in the court life of ancient China, and depictions of musicians playing instruments, both string and percussion, can be seen in wood and pottery figures from the Han through the Tang dynasty, and as decoration on bronzes of the Eastern Zhou period. Figures shown playing a set of bells and stone chimes is shown in a reproduction of decoration on a bronze hu from Baihuatan, Chengdu, Sichuan province, illustrated by J. So (ed.), Music in the Age of Confucius, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington DC, 2000, p. 20, fig. 1.7. As R. W. Bagley states in his chapter on percussion, ibid., pp. 35-63, "no other instrument tells us so much about musical performance, music theory, and acoustic technology." He goes on to point out that "sets of bells were both aurally and visually the most prominent instruments of musical ensembles" in ancient China, but outside of China were unknown.
Bells (zhong) of this type, with a large loop handle formed by the addorsed bodies of dragons, tigers, or birds, are known as bo. They come in various sizes, as they were made in graduated sets, and with variations in their decoration. A set of eight graduated bo zhong in the Musée Guimet, of smaller size (the largest 29 cm.), cast with similar bands of coiled-serpent bosses, and with a handle formed by a pair of addorsed tigers, is illustrated by C. Delacour, De bronze, d'or et d'argent, Arts somptuaires de la Chine, Paris, 2001, pp. 44-46.
The handle on the present bo zhong consists of a central large serpent seen en face with two bodies, each going up in a bold S-curve and wrapping around the necks of two addorsed tigers with backward-turned heads. A very similar handle and similar decoration on the body can be seen on a bo zhong of smaller size (31.7 cm.) illustrated by B. Karlgren in A Catalogue of the Chinese Bronzes in the Alfred F. Pillsbury Collection, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1952, pp. 156-59, no. 58, pls. 81-1. A similar handle can also be seen on a massive (67 cm.) bo zhong in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, illustrated by J. So in Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1995, p. 377, fig. 77.5. For related large bronze bo zhong sold at auction, see the example of smaller size (33 cm.) sold at Christie’s New York, 22-23 March 2012, lot 1513, and the example of larger size (43.7 cm.) sold at Christie’s New York, 13 September 2018, lot 1117.
Bells (zhong) of this type, with a large loop handle formed by the addorsed bodies of dragons, tigers, or birds, are known as bo. They come in various sizes, as they were made in graduated sets, and with variations in their decoration. A set of eight graduated bo zhong in the Musée Guimet, of smaller size (the largest 29 cm.), cast with similar bands of coiled-serpent bosses, and with a handle formed by a pair of addorsed tigers, is illustrated by C. Delacour, De bronze, d'or et d'argent, Arts somptuaires de la Chine, Paris, 2001, pp. 44-46.
The handle on the present bo zhong consists of a central large serpent seen en face with two bodies, each going up in a bold S-curve and wrapping around the necks of two addorsed tigers with backward-turned heads. A very similar handle and similar decoration on the body can be seen on a bo zhong of smaller size (31.7 cm.) illustrated by B. Karlgren in A Catalogue of the Chinese Bronzes in the Alfred F. Pillsbury Collection, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1952, pp. 156-59, no. 58, pls. 81-1. A similar handle can also be seen on a massive (67 cm.) bo zhong in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, illustrated by J. So in Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1995, p. 377, fig. 77.5. For related large bronze bo zhong sold at auction, see the example of smaller size (33 cm.) sold at Christie’s New York, 22-23 March 2012, lot 1513, and the example of larger size (43.7 cm.) sold at Christie’s New York, 13 September 2018, lot 1117.