A BRONZE RITUAL FOOD VESSEL, GUI

EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY BC

Details

A BRONZE RITUAL FOOD VESSEL, GUI
EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY BC
The slightly S-curved body is raised on a spreading foot encircled by a band comprised of four taotie masks, and is encircled below the everted rim with a band of four further taotie, the two on the main sides centered by an animal mask cast in relief, the other two by the animal heads that surmount the handles which have hooked pendants at the bottom. The patina is of mottled green and brown color, with some areas of malachite encrustation.
10 in. (25.5 cm.) across handles

Provenance

A.K.E. Jonsson Collection.
Sotheby's London, 16 November 1971, lot 8.
J.T. Tai & Co. Inc., New York, June 1975.
Arthur M. Sacker Collections, New York.
Else Sackler Collection, and thence by descent within the family.

Literature

"The Exhibition of Early Chinese Bronzes, Stockholm 1933," BMFEA, No. 6, Stockholm, 1934, pl. XXI, fig. 1.
J. Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. IIB, Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1990, pp. 384-85, no. 43.

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Lot Essay

Compare the similar gui, also dated early Western Zhou, illustrated by J. Rawson in Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. IIB, Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1990, p. 385, fig. 43.1. See, also, the similar gui in the collection of the Danish National Museum, illustrated by M. Boyer, "Some Chinese Archaic Bronzes in the Danish National Museum", BMFEA, No. 27, Stockholm, 1955, pp. 1-10, pl. 5 (b).

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