MIDDLE WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 9TH CENTURY BC

Details

AN UNUSUAL BRONZE POURING VESSEL, HE
MIDDLE WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 9TH CENTURY BC
The quadrilobed body raised on four slender tapering columnar legs, cast in low relief on the neck with two pairs of crested, long-tailed birds confronted on a simplified mask and reserved on a leiwen ground, with a similar band on the slightly domed cover below a crouching tiger finial, a ring at the back of the cover attached to the ring formed by the hands of a man with turned head standing atop the bovine mask which surmounts the loop handle, with mottled greenish-grey patina
8½ in. (21.6 cm.) high

Provenance

Acquired in the 1980s or 1990s.

Lot Essay

Bands of long-tailed birds can be found on two he with similar bodies and legs illustrated by J. Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington DC and Cambridge, Massachusetts, vol. IIB, 1990, p. 675, fig. 114.2 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and fig. 114.3 (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto). Both are dated Middle Western Zhou, and both have the handle issuing from a bovine mask, but neither has the rare decorative features of the crouching lion finial or the standing figure of a man of the present vessel. However, a human-form link joining loops on the cover and top of the handle can be seen on another four-legged he with duck's-head spout, dated to Western Zhou, excavated at Pingding Shan, Hebei province, and illustrated in Zhongguo Qingtongqi Quanji - Xi Zhou, vol. 6, p. 92, no. 94.

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