拍品专文
The inscription reads ... zuo fu gui zun yi and may be translated as: ... made this sacred vessel for father/ancestor gui. The first character of three components is a clan name that has not yet been deciphered. Ancestors were referred to by cyclical denominators, here: gui, the tenth of the ten heavenly branches.
Compare a similar vessel in the Royal Ontario Museum, The T.T.Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art, illustrated in the Catalogue (Pl.9) and dated to the Shang dynasty; and a you dated to the early Western Zhou dynasty, with more elaborate ornamental bands but the same twisted handle with animal-mask hinges, excavated at Gaojiabao, Jinyang County, Shaanxi Province and illustrated by Li Xixing in The Shaanxi Bronzes, Shaanxi People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 1991, Pl.155, p.194.
Jessica Rawson discusses two other closely related you vessels in Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes in the Sackler Collection, nos.64 & 65, pp.478-484: tall pear-shaped bronze vessels of this kind were made as early as the Anyang period, with a fairly plain surface but for the three horizontal thread-relief bands.
Compare a similar vessel in the Royal Ontario Museum, The T.T.Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art, illustrated in the Catalogue (Pl.9) and dated to the Shang dynasty; and a you dated to the early Western Zhou dynasty, with more elaborate ornamental bands but the same twisted handle with animal-mask hinges, excavated at Gaojiabao, Jinyang County, Shaanxi Province and illustrated by Li Xixing in The Shaanxi Bronzes, Shaanxi People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 1991, Pl.155, p.194.
Jessica Rawson discusses two other closely related you vessels in Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes in the Sackler Collection, nos.64 & 65, pp.478-484: tall pear-shaped bronze vessels of this kind were made as early as the Anyang period, with a fairly plain surface but for the three horizontal thread-relief bands.