A BRONZE RITUAL FOOD VESSEL, GUI

EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH-10TH CENTURY BC

Details

A BRONZE RITUAL FOOD VESSEL, GUI
EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH-10TH CENTURY BC
The slightly bulbous body raised on a foot encircled by dragon panels and cast with a central diamond-and-boss pattern with elongated leiwen below a band of abstract dragon scroll centered by small animal masks and interrupted by two rams' heads surmounting loop handles decorated with scrolls and with a hooked tab projecting from the bottom, the interior cast with a three-character inscription, with satiny dark grey patina
9½in. (24cm.) over handles, box

Literature

Hayashi Minao, In Shu jidai seidoki no kenkyu (In Shu seidoki soran ichi), Tokyo, 1984, p. 243, no. 109.

Lot Essay

The inscription consists of three graphs: the second and third graphs may be read as Fu Yi ('Father Yi'). Citing a similar oracle bone graph, Hayashi has suggested that the graph formed by three superimposed pairs of crossed lines, which appears in bronze inscriptions, might be the name of a state. See, Hayashi Minao, "In Shu jidai no zuzo kigo", Toho gakuho, 39, 1968, p. 41, fig. 18:28. This same three-graph inscription appears on a fangding unearthed at Yuntangcun, Fufengxian, Shaanxi province, in 1950. See, Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi, Beijing, vol. 3, no. 65.

Compare the similar bronze gui illustrated by J. Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington DC/Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990, pp. 390-1, no. 45.

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