A Rare Pair of Bronze Ritual Wine Vessels and Covers, Fanghu

SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD (770-476 BC)

Details

A Rare Pair of Bronze Ritual Wine Vessels and Covers, Fanghu
Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC)
Each of rounded, rectangular pear shape, the body well cast with raised strapwork borders dividing each side into quadrants, the panels of the lower register left plain while those above are cast in low relief with interlaced dragon scroll repeated in two bands on the neck which is flanked by a pair of dragons with long tails and backwards-turned heads that form the handles, all below a crown-like rim of eight everted petals cast with further scroll decoration surrounding two hinged door-like covers of D-shape, each finely cast with a field of small scrolls reserved on a granulated ground and applied with a small loop handle, with allover lapis and blue-green encrustation
14¾in. (37.5cm.) high, brocade boxes (2)

Provenance

Acquired in December 1993.

Lot Essay

The hu was used for storing wine or water and in the Spring and Autumn period its rectangular version was usually of large or medium size.

A larger example (66 cm. high) of slightly more elongated proportions from the same period, unearthed in 1988 from tomb no. 251, Jinsheng village, Taiyuan, Shanxi province and now in the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, was included in the exhibition, China 5,000 Years, H. Rogers ed., New York, 1998, no. 43, and is discussed in depth, along with three other identical fanghu found in the same tomb, by Zhu Qixin, 'Bronze Vessels from a Spring and Autumn Period Tomb', Chinese Bronzes: Selected Articles from Orientations 1983-2000 , June 2000, pp. 104-107.

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