A SMALL BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, ZHI

EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY BC

Details

A SMALL BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, ZHI
EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY BC
Of pear shape and oval section, the sides cast in high relief with two taotie masks with bulging eyes and rams' horns, each flanked by two small bottle-horn dragons also with prominent eyes, as are the small eyes of the pairs of confronted birds with hooked beaks in the band above and the pairs of confronted dragons on the pedestal foot, with a dog-tooth band below the upright rim, the bottom of the interior cast with a bird-shaped graph, with smooth mottled grey and green patina and malachite green encrustation
5¼ in. (13.3 cm.) high

Provenance

S. & G. Gump Co., San Francisco, California.
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
The Cranbrook Collection; Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 2-5 May 1972, lot 433.

Literature

Chen Mengjia, Yin Zhou qingtongqi fenlei tulu (Inshu seidoki bunrui zuroku; A Corpus of Chinese Bronzes in American Collections), Tokyo, A530, R185.
Hayashi Minao, Inshu jidai seidoki no kenkyu (Inshu seidoki soran ichi), Tokyo, 1984, vol. 2, pl. 430, zhi no. 50.
J. Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Collections of Arthur M. Sackler, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1990, pp. 624-5, no. 99.

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Lot Essay

Three of the spacers (chaplets) embedded in the vessel, the one visible on the base and two near the eyes of the taotie on one side, are cast with leiwen, and would have been fragments of another bronze used in the casting process.

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