AN ARCHAIC BRONZE WINE VESSEL, gu, of tall slender shape with broadly flaring mouth and splayed base, the mid-section crisply cast in shallow relief on a leiwen ground with dissolved taotie masks with raised eyes and C-shaped horns divided by four vertical flanges, above a plain double-ribbed band pierced with two cruciform apertures, the base similarly decorated with taotie and leiwen below a band of small dragons, the neck with a band of snakes below upright cicada blades incised with leiwen rising to the rim, the bronze with a pale green and gun-metal patina with areas of malachite encrustation,

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

細節

AN ARCHAIC BRONZE WINE VESSEL, gu, of tall slender shape with broadly flaring mouth and splayed base, the mid-section crisply cast in shallow relief on a leiwen ground with dissolved taotie masks with raised eyes and C-shaped horns divided by four vertical flanges, above a plain double-ribbed band pierced with two cruciform apertures, the base similarly decorated with taotie and leiwen below a band of small dragons, the neck with a band of snakes below upright cicada blades incised with leiwen rising to the rim, the bronze with a pale green and gun-metal patina with areas of malachite encrustation,

Shang Dynasty
28cm. high

來源

C.J. Fuchs, Sotheby's London, 2 December 1974, lot 4

拍品專文

Similar gu vases are illustrated by B. Karlgren and J. Wirgin, Chinese Bronzes, The Natanael Wessen Collection, col.pl.4 and pl.21; by F. Kelley, Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection, p.33, pl.XII; by M. Bussagli, Chinese Bronzes, p.11, col. pl.2, from the Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas; by B. Karlgren, 'New Studies on Chinese Bronzes', B.M.F.E.A., no.9, 1937, pls. XXI and XXII; by M. Boyer, 'Some Chinese Archaistic Bronzes in the Danish National Museum', op.cit., no. 27, 1955, pl.I; by W. Watson, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, fig.20; by B. Karlgren, The Pillsbury Collection of Chinese Bronzes, pl.37 and pl.38, no.25; by J. Rawson, Ancient Chinese and Ordos Bronzes, p.83, no.11; by C. Deydier, Les Bronzes Chinois, fig.29, from the Museum van Aziatische Kunst, Amsterdam; and by P. Yetts, The Cull Chinese Bronzes, pl.VIII, no.5