EARLY SHANG DYNASTY, ERLIGANG PHASE, CIRCA 1600-1500 BC

Details

A RARE BRONZE RITUAL TRIPOD WINE VESSEL, JIA
EARLY SHANG DYNASTY, ERLIGANG PHASE, CIRCA 1600-1500 BC
Raised on three thick legs of slightly curved triangular section and with flat bottom, the vessel is cast in intaglio on the body with a band comprised of three taotie masks centered on narrow flanges and with raised eyes, below a trumpet-shaped neck cast with a band of linear scroll decoration within narrow borders of circles that ends either side of the strap handle which has a median ridge. A pair of posts surmounted by whorl-cast conical caps rises from the rim. The patina is of mottled grey color.
9¾ in. (24.7 cm.) high, Japanese wood box, wood stand

Provenance

Asami Collection, Osaka, Japan.
Mansour Gallery, London, 1997.

Lot Essay

A very similar jia of slightly larger size (26.4 cm.), dated early Shang dynasty, 16th-11th century BC, in the collection of the Shanghai Museum, is illustrated by Ma Chengyuan in "Bronze Vessels in the Transitional Period between Xia and Shang", Chinese Bronzes, Selected articles from Orientations 1983-2000, Hong Kong, 2001, pp. 138-41, fig. 5. Another similar jia (25.2 cm.) from Zhengzhou Erligang, is illustrated in Henan chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi, vol. 1, Beijing, 1981, no. 55, and again by R.W. Bagley in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1987, p. 81, fig. 56.

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