A RARE LARGE BRONZE AND RED POTTERY MONEY TREE

EASTERN HAN DYNASTY

Details

A RARE LARGE BRONZE AND RED POTTERY MONEY TREE
Eastern Han Dynasty
The red pottery base molded with a lower register of elephants and fairy-like attendants below a man seated astride a ram standing amidst grasses and flowering plants, the rider holding a large cylinder into which fits the slender trunk of the bronze tree formed by five partially hollowed segments of oval section, each cast in high relief with the figure of a seated bear, the top of each with four slotted extensions for the fitting of the delicate, curving branches pierced and cast with various mythical figures, animals, wheeled carts and cash emblems with fringed edges, the whole surmounted by fairies and mythical creatures standing atop a bi disc flanked by further arms of cash and figures, with traces of red, white and black pigment on the base
62in. (158.8cm.) high approx.

Lot Essay

Money trees, named after the coins in their branches, providing a promise of eternal wealth and happiness in the afterlife, are generally dated to the Eastern Han period.

Refer to the example excavated in 1972 from Pengshan county, Sichuan province, now in the Sichuan Provincial Museum, Chengdu and illustrated by Jessica Rawson in the Catalogue of the exhibition, Mysteries of China, British Museum, London, 1996, p. 177, no. 87. Another intact example in the Xianyang Museum, is illustrated in Gems of China's Cultural Relics, Beijing, 1997, pl. 82.

Another with bear-form struts similar to the present lot, from the Herman Herzog Levy collection, is illustrated in Royal Ontario Museum: The T.T. Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art, Toronto, 1996, no. 44. See, also, the base of a money tree with a similar elephant procession in the Sichuan Provincial Museum illustrated by Wu Hung in Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture, Stanford, 1995, p. 141, fig. 2.60b.

The result of Oxford Authentication Ltd. thermoluminescence test no. C298c74 is consistent with the dating of this lot.