A MASSIVE ARCHAIC BRONZE WINE VESSEL AND COVER, FANGHU

LATE WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY

Details

A MASSIVE ARCHAIC BRONZE WINE VESSEL AND COVER, FANGHU
Late Western Zhou Dynasty
The softly faceted pear-shaped body cast and chased with the intertwined sinuous bodies of dragons and birds, their merged tails terminating in monster masks cast in high relief, with a band of scroll-filled lappets encircling the spreading pedestal foot and a band of abstract scrolls on the neck, the two large loop handles applied with taotie masks, the cover with a band of dragon scroll below the crown decorated with a further pierced lappet band, with a mottled pale green and reddish-brown patina
23in. (59cm.) high

Lot Essay

The decorative motifs on this lot are characteristic of Western Zhou vessels in the way they 'dissolve' into disparate parts, and in the use of wavelike bands seen on the main and lower registers.

Compare the closely related vessel in Gems of China's Cultural Relics, Beijing, 1997, no. 66, unearthed in 1997 from Xinzheng City, Henan province. Other similar vessels, but with much higher relief decoration, include one from the National Palace Museum illustrated by Wen C. Fong and J. Watt in the Catalogue of the exhibition, Possessing the Past, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 19 March - 19 May 1996, p. 79, pl. 42; and another, from the History Museum, China, in Zhongguo Meishu Quanji; Diaosu Bian (The Great Treasury of Chinese Fine Arts; Sculpture), Beijing, 1988, vol. 1, p. 94.