Lot Essay
The three-character inscription in the cover reads zuo ce Ci (made for Registrar Ci). Ce was an official title equivalent to a registrar and Ci is probably a personal name.
A you of similar form and with similar rope-twist handle and lozenge-pattern band was excavated in 1984 from tomb 269 in Qijia Village, East, Anyang, Henan province, and is illustrated in Zhongguo Qingtongqi Quanji - 3 - Shang(3), Beijing, 1997, p. 126, no. 125. See, also, the similar you illustrated by R. W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington D.C. and Cambridge, 1987, p. 388, no. 68, where another similar example from Henan Hui Xian, is illustrated, p. 392, fig. 68.5. The author refers to the lozenge pattern cast on these vessels as being common to the late Anyang period, and proposes that it may have evolved from early Anyang designs of scorpions, such as those seen on a bronze hu in the Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Koln, which the author illustrates on p. 390, fig. 68.1.
A you of similar form and with similar rope-twist handle and lozenge-pattern band was excavated in 1984 from tomb 269 in Qijia Village, East, Anyang, Henan province, and is illustrated in Zhongguo Qingtongqi Quanji - 3 - Shang(3), Beijing, 1997, p. 126, no. 125. See, also, the similar you illustrated by R. W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington D.C. and Cambridge, 1987, p. 388, no. 68, where another similar example from Henan Hui Xian, is illustrated, p. 392, fig. 68.5. The author refers to the lozenge pattern cast on these vessels as being common to the late Anyang period, and proposes that it may have evolved from early Anyang designs of scorpions, such as those seen on a bronze hu in the Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Koln, which the author illustrates on p. 390, fig. 68.1.