This owl appears unusual in that published examples of pottery owls from the Han period are usually in the form of a vessel and cover, rather than a complete model. An owl of the same generous proportions with the head modeled as the cover, from the collection of Dr. Paul Singer, was included in the exhibition, The Art of the Eastern Chou, 772-221 B.C., Chinese Art Society of America, New York, 1961, Catalogue, no. 64. Other related examples of more slender proportions, also with separately modeled heads, are in the Charles B. Hoyt Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, included in the Memorial Exhibition, February 13-March 30, 1952, illustrated in the Catalogue, vol. 1, no. 5; another in Sekai Toji Zenshu, vol. 8, Tokyo, 1955, pl. 66; and a pair illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, Tokyo, 1976, p. 56, no. 135

Examples of owl-form vessels in bronze, of which the present lot is a descendent, are extant from the Shang period and were among the most commonly depicted subject for animal-form vessels from this period. See Robert W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Harvard University Press, 1987, 406-411. For an Eastern Zhou example, see the example from the collection of Dr. Paul Singer, included in the exhibition, The Art of Eastern Chou, op. cit., p. 15, no. 13

The result of Oxford thermoluminescence test no. 566a25 is consistent with the dating of this lot