Lot 907
907
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU
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VARIOUS PROPERTIES
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU

LATE SHANG-EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY

Details
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU
LATE SHANG-EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY
The pear-shaped body is raised on a splayed foot cast with two bow-string bands, and is decorated on each side with a large taotie mask below a band of kui dragons centered by an animal mask cast in high relief, and interrupted by a loop at each end attached to the rings at the end of the rope-twist handle. The sides and the top of the cover are decorated with bands of confronting kui dragons beneath a segmented finial. Both the interior of the vessel and the cover are cast with a four-character inscription, xiang ning fu xin. The surface has a mottled brownish-red patina and some malachite and cuprite encrustation.
7 ¾ in. (19.4 cm.) high
Provenance
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 20 March 1976, lot 25.
J. T. Tai & Co., New York.
Literature
Wu Zhenfeng, ed. Shang Zhou qing tong qi ming wen ji tu xiang ji cheng (Corpus of Inscriptions and Images of Bronzes from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties), 2012, vol. 23, no. 12960.

Lot Essay

The inscription consists of two characters xiang ning (a clan sign), followed by fu xin (Father Xin). The two-character clan sign, xiang ning, consists of an altar positioned below two figures kneeling before a vessel. It is believed to be the pictographic version of the character for banquet in Chinese. A similar clan sign can be found on a late Shang jue in the Shanghai Museum illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji - 3 - Shang (3), Beijing, 1997, p. 26, no. 26.

Compare the similar you illustrated by M. Sullivan in Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes and Jades in the Collection of Sir Alan and Lady Barlow, London, 1963, no. B8, pl. 151.

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