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A RARE AND IMPORTANT BRONZE TRIPOD RITUAL FOOD VESSEL, LIDING
CHINA, SHANG DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC
Liding Sacral Food Vessel with Taotie Décor
商 青銅饕餮紋鬲鼎
Chinese; Shang dynasty, 12th–11th century BC
Cast bronze
The bronze ritual vessels produced during China’s Shang dynasty 商朝 (c. 1600–c. 1050 BC) rank among the finest examples of bronze casting the world has ever seen, as witnessed by this superb liding tripod 鬲鼎. Not only are the forms of Shang vessels intriguing and satisfying, but such vessels exhibit a wealth of complex, integrally cast, surface decoration unknown in bronzes from other civilizations.
A sacral vessel for use in a funerary ceremony, this exceptionally well-cast bronze liding 鬲鼎 tripod has three subtly defined lobes that join and then resolve themselves in the circular mouth rim from which rise two diametrically opposed loop handles. The vessel stands on three long, undecorated, columnar legs. A low-relief taotie mask 饕餮紋 dramatically embellishes each of the vessel’s lobes, the masks centered one above each leg, so that the legs appear to issue from the taotie’s mouth. The taotie masks, whose surfaces are lightly modulated, portray the fierce beast frontally and depict its upper jaw, flared nostrils, prominent nose bridge, bulging eyes, and large C-horns. A pair of downward-facing kui dragons, or kuilong 夔龍, flanks each taotie mask, each dragon presented in profile and shown with a long snout, bulging eye, short body, and upturned tail. The relief decoration appears against an integrally cast background of leiwen 雷紋, or small, squared spirals. The continuous vertical lines that appear at the outside edge of each mask unit not only clearly distinguish one lobe from the next but reveal where the individual mold segments were joined during casting.
Bronze casting came fully into its own during the Shang dynasty with the production of sacral vessels intended for use in funerary ceremonies. Although their exact use remains obscure, such ritual vessels include ones for food, wine, and water; those for food and wine, the types most commonly encountered among Shang bronzes, group themselves into storage vessels, heating and cooking vessels, and presentation and serving vessels. This liding likely served as a vessel for cooking grain, perhaps millet or sorghum, as an offering to the spirit of the deceased, though it might well have been used for serving such an offering rather than for preparing it.
As Robert Bagley has noted, modern authors often characterize lobed vessels such as the present one by the hybrid term liding 鬲鼎 to indicate that it stands somewhere between the tripod li 鬲 and the round, or circular, ding 鼎, both of which were food cooking and serving vessels and both of which trace their ancestry to ceramics from the late Neolithic period 新石器時代. In practice, however, no sharp dividing line can be drawn between li and ding, as examples can easily be found to represent any shape intermediate between those with deep, clearly articulated lobes and those with shallow ones. There is on the other hand a clear-cut distinction between lobed ding and round ding, the distinction emphasized by the different placement of the décor schemes applied to the two shapes. Round ding are typically decorated with taotie masks set between the legs. However, as that placement of the masts is ill-suited to lobed vessels, which have preferred axes aligned with the three legs, taotie masks are centered over the legs of li and lobed ding vessels.
The most important decorative motif on vessels from the Shang dynasty is the taotie 饕餮 mask, as witnessed by this outstanding liding vessel. As seen here, the mask typically boasts a ferocious feline-like face presented frontally; the animal’s body, if depicted, is shown in reduced scale and extends laterally outward from the face. On this vessel, the animal’s body has been supplanted by the pair of downward-facing kui dragons 夔龍 that flank each mask. In rare instances the taotie mask may be presented against an otherwise unembellished ground, but, as here, the mask and other decorative motifs are typically set against an intricate leiwen 雷文 background. It is likely that the taotie mask and other motifs that enliven these sacral bronzes had meaning for the people of the Shang dynasty; in the absence of contemporaneous written records detailing possible meanings, however, we cannot know precisely what symbolism those motifs might have held, if any. Speculation abounds, but precise identification necessarily must await discovery of hard evidence from the people who created and used them.
The taotie mask appears as decoration on bronze vessels from all periods of the Shang dynasty and even into the early Western Zhou period 西周早期 (c. 1050 BC–771 BC). That its principal decorative motifs rise in relief against the leiwen background dates this liding to the last phase of the Shang and suggests that it was made at or near Anyang, Henan province 河南省安陽市, the last Shang capital. The decoration on vessels from earlier in the Shang would not have risen in relief but would have been depicted with linear elements of varying width but still set against a leiwen ground; such vessels would have been more self-contained, their surfaces smooth and their decorative elements flush with the vessel surface. By contrast, vessels from the very end of the Shang would show even bolder designs, the decorative elements rising in even higher relief from the vessel surface, and the taotie masks likely bifurcated by a flange extending from the vessel lip though the center of the taotie and to the top of the associated leg.
Sacral vessels from the Shang dynasty were used in ceremonies honoring the spirits of deceased ancestors. As such, many bear integrally cast, dedicatory inscriptions 銘文 that might include a clan symbol, the name of the person in whose ceremonies they presumably were used, and sometimes other emblems, as well. Such inscriptions’ so-called bronze-script characters 金文字 relate to contemporaneous oracle-bone-script characters 甲骨文字—that is, characters carved on ox scapulae or turtle plastrons as part of a divination process employed in Shang times—and they are the direct ancestors of modern written Chinese.
Integrally cast with the vessel itself, the inscription on the interior wall of this liding includes three graphs arranged in a vertical column, Fu 父, Gui 癸, and another graph, at the top, whose modern form, pronunciation, and meaning have been variously interpreted. Although some have interpreted the first graph—which superficially resembles a lobed vessel seen in profile and with a “single quotation mark” on either side, just below the top—as the ancient form of the modern character Bing 丙, others regard it as a clan sign, or totem, and designate it with a small white square □, indicating that both its meaning and its pronunciation are unknown at present. The same graph, which appears on a late Shang or early Western Zhou bronze ritual he 盉 wine vessel—the Ran Fu Bing He冉父丙盉—has more recently been read as Ran 冉 and interpreted as a clan sign; from a distinguished European collection, the he vessel sold at Christie’s, New York, in March 2021 (Lot 805). The second and third graphs in the inscription read Fu 父 and Gui 癸 and refer to Father Gui; thus, it can reasonably be assumed that the inscription indicates that the vessel was dedicated to Father Gui of the Ran Clan and that it likely was used in his funerary ceremonies.
In terms of casting, unlike the artisans of most early civilizations, who employed the lost-wax technique in casting bronzes, Chinese foundrymen of the Shang dynasty utilized the so-called piece-mold casting technique in producing their ritual vessels, which yielded the exceptional quality evident in this liding. Those early Chinese workers first produced a clay model in the shape of the desired vessel, carving the decoration into the clay model’s moist surfaces, after which the model was fired. Casting molds were prepared by pressing moist clay segments against the fired model; once all had been prepared, the mold segments were fired. In preparing to cast the vessels, the mold segments were properly registered and joined together around an inner core of fired clay. (As previously mentioned, the continuous vertical lines that appear at the outside edge of each mask unit reveal where the individual mold segments were joined together). Once assembled, mold was tightly bound together and inverted, so that the vessel’s legs pointed upward and the vessel lip and handles faced downward, after which the molten bronze was introduced through sprues, or tubular passageways; air within the mold and any gases escaping from the molten bronze vented though a corresponding set of flues. Once the mass had cooled, the mold was removed, releasing the bronze vessel. The inversion of the mold ensured that the molten bronze would reach the very bottom of the mold, so that there would be no bubble flaws on the lip or handles of the finished vessel; any bubbles that did interrupt the surfaces likely would appear as casting flaws on the vessel’s less visible underside and legs.
The advantage of the piece-mold technique is that, unlike the lost-wax technique, it gave the Shang bronze casters direct access to the casting mold’s interior faces, which allowed them to correct any flaws in the decorative designs and perhaps even to embellish them further, which permitted precision casting of exceptionally fine design elements, thus giving rise to the extraordinarily detailed, exceptionally precise designs integrally cast on this bronze. Of course, in the post-casting finishing of the vessels, any adhering mold fragments had to be cleaned from away, and the surfaces had to be polished and, in some instances, touched up a bit. But what must be kept firmly in mind is that the decoration was integrally cast with the vessels themselves, rather than chased or chiseled after casting. The very intricate surface decoration of Chinese bronze vessels, particularly the leiwen, or background patterns perfectly illustrate the sophistication of Chinese casting methods; in fact, they stand in marked contrast to the often smooth, undecorated surfaces of bronzes produced with the lost-wax technique.
This liding was published as early as 1958; moreover, it has an enviable and continuous record of provenance dating back to 1950 and earlier and has been treasured by collectors in England, the United States, Japan, and other East Asian countries. Closely related vessels are in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (1944.57.19), the Saint Louis Art Museum (288:55), the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the U.S. National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC (S1987.304), and the Sumitomo Collection 住友コレクション at the Sen-oku Hakuko Kan, Kyoto 京都泉屋博古館. Another closely related liding from a Japanese private collection sold at Sotheby’s, New York, on 11 September 2019 (Lot 504). The related vessel excavated in 1990 from Tomb M160 at Guojiazhuangxi, Anyang, Henan province 河南省安陽郭家莊西M160號墓地出土 is now in the care of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 北京中國社會科學院. Another comparable example is in the collection of the Hunan Museum, Changsha 湖南省長沙市湖南省博物馆.
We appreciate works of art for their beauty and for the invaluable information they convey about the peoples and cultures that produced them. We often forget, however, that many works can tell us as much about a civilization’s level of technological sophistication as about its artistic and aesthetic sensibilities. In particular, those works whose creation required high temperatures, whether for firing, in the case of ceramics, or smelting, in the case of bronze, are true measures of an early civilization’s technological prowess.
Apart from their function as sacral vessels and apart from the information they convey about early Chinese culture, beliefs, and funerary practices, we admire Chinese bronzes for their inventive shapes, bold decoration, and precise casting, as witnessed this superb liding vessel. In fact, it is the precision of the casting, from the majestic vessels themselves to their intricately embellished surfaces, that marks Chinese bronze ritual vessels as truly and wondrously exceptional; in that context, this liding stands as a telling comment on the exceptionally high level of technological sophistication present already in the earliest phases of Chinese historical development.
Robert D. Mowry 毛瑞
Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus,
Harvard Art Museums, and
Senior Consultant, Christie’s
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