LATE SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD, 6TH CENTURY BC

Details

A PAIR OF BRONZE RITUAL FOOD VESSELS AND COVERS, DOU
LATE SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD, 6TH CENTURY BC
Each raised on a spreading pedestal foot flat-cast with five narrow decorative bands, the bowl decorated with a band of densely arranged entwined angular bird scroll interrupted by a pair of ring handles and repeated in three concentric bands on the domed cover below the everted crown decorated with entwined dragon scroll above a whorl motif in the center, with mottled grey and milky green patina, with some malachite encrustation on the interiors
7¾ in. (19.7 cm.) high (2)

Provenance

In the United States by 1995.

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Lot Essay

A dou of similar proportions and with similar flat-cast decoration, including the petals situated below the band of decoration encircling the waist of the vessel, from the Pillsbury Collection, Minneapolis Institute of Art, is illustrated by G. W. Weber, Jr., The Ornaments of Late Chou Bronzes, A Method of Analysis, New Jersey, 1973, p. 132, no. 17. See, also, the dou with similar flat-cast decoration, but lacking the petals below the band encircling the vessel, illustrated by J. So, Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, Washington DC, 1995, pp. 178-83, no. 24, where the author notes that the dou eventually replaced the gui as a food or grain container in tomb assemblages. In turn, "by the mid-Warring States period the dou had been superceded by the dui in both daily life and burial contexts."

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