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Lot Essay
The single graph cast beneath the handle can be read as bing, one of the calendrical 'Heavenly Stems' - here it may be read as a personal name.
Two jue in the British Museum and Shanghai Museum collections are very similar in form and ornamentation style. Stylistic features such as a deep body, relative to splayed feet, low scored flanges on three sides of the vessel, the fourth with bovine mask handle and inscription underneath. Taotie scrolls and leiwen spirals in low relief on the main register are surmounted by triangles in the upper part of the vessel, reaching toward the rim, from which two whorl-capped posts rise up. See the British Museum Collection (accession no. 1935,0115.22) , and Shanghai Bowuguan cang Qingtongqi, (fuce) , Shanghai 1964, p.15, no. 17.
For other comparable jue see the Sackler Collection, illustrated by Bagley in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington DC and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987, pp. 194-195, no. 18. See also a Shang jue in the Collection of Daniel Shapiro, illustrated in Chinese Archaic Bronzes: The Collection of Daniel Shapiro, J.J Lally & Co., Hong Kong, 1994, pp. 12-13, no. 2.
See another jue, also described by R. Bagley (ibid p.251, fig 36.2) said to be from Anyang which is similar to two other examples, one in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (ibid.p. 251, fig 36.1) and in the Freer Gallery of Art, illustrated in The Freer Chinese Bronzes, vol.I, Catalogue, Washington 1967, pp. 146-149.
Two jue in the British Museum and Shanghai Museum collections are very similar in form and ornamentation style. Stylistic features such as a deep body, relative to splayed feet, low scored flanges on three sides of the vessel, the fourth with bovine mask handle and inscription underneath. Taotie scrolls and leiwen spirals in low relief on the main register are surmounted by triangles in the upper part of the vessel, reaching toward the rim, from which two whorl-capped posts rise up. See the British Museum Collection (accession no. 1935,0115.22) , and Shanghai Bowuguan cang Qingtongqi, (fuce) , Shanghai 1964, p.15, no. 17.
For other comparable jue see the Sackler Collection, illustrated by Bagley in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington DC and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987, pp. 194-195, no. 18. See also a Shang jue in the Collection of Daniel Shapiro, illustrated in Chinese Archaic Bronzes: The Collection of Daniel Shapiro, J.J Lally & Co., Hong Kong, 1994, pp. 12-13, no. 2.
See another jue, also described by R. Bagley (ibid p.251, fig 36.2) said to be from Anyang which is similar to two other examples, one in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (ibid.p. 251, fig 36.1) and in the Freer Gallery of Art, illustrated in The Freer Chinese Bronzes, vol.I, Catalogue, Washington 1967, pp. 146-149.