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Lot Essay
Heralding a New Era:
A Rare and Important Western Zhou Fangzuogui Vessel
Robert D. Mowry
Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus,
Harvard Art Museums, and Senior Consultant, Christie’s
Exceptionally rare, this gui food-serving vessel is art-historically important for its elevation of the bowl on an integrally cast, square socle and for its reliance on vertical ribs as its principal decorative motif, thereby advancing a newly introduced interpretation of the vessel type; the ribbed décor combined with the tall, square socle, or base, signals a break with the stylistic legacy of the previous Shang dynasty and the establishment of a distinctive Zhou-dynasty mode. As such, the vessel joins a small group of other socled gui vessels with rib décor produced in the early Western Zhou period (c. 1050–c. 975 BC). Apart from its art-historical importance, this gui vessel also has a very distinguished provenance, having previously been in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.
A large sacral vessel for serving cooked millet, sorghum, rice, or other grains, this bronze gui vessel comprises a circular bowl set on a tall, square socle, or base. The bowl, or container portion of the vessel, has an S-profile that terminates in a lightly flaring lip that thickens at its outer edge; it is set on a canted, circular footring. Integrally cast with the bowl, the hollow, square socle elevates and supports the bowl. A loop handle issues from the stylized head of a horned animal on either side of the bowl’s neck, each handle immediately circling downward and connecting to the bowl just above the footring. The dense band of vertical ribs encircling the bowl’s belly constitutes the vessel’s principal decorative motif; even so, the ribs are not used alone, but, in typical Early Western Zhou fashion, appear in concert with such subsidiary motifs as the kui dragons, or kuilong, that stride around the splayed footring and the whirligig bosses that alternate with flower-like motifs in the narrow band encircling the neck—as Robert W. Bagley has termed those design elements.1 (Chinese authors typically refer to the whirligig bosses and flower-like motifs as “fire and four-petal eye motifs”, sometimes as “fire and four-leaf motifs”2, and occasionally as “whirlpool and four-leaf motifs”.) Each side of the square socle sports a horizontal panel of vertical ribs bordered above and below by a pair of confronting kuilong and on either side by a single, vertically set kuilong, the single kui dragons striding upward but turning their heads back to face their tails. Although the kui dragons on the base rise in slight relief against a background of finely cast leiwen, or squared spirals, the decorative motifs in the bands above and below the bowl’s central register of ribs rise in slight relief against an unembellished ground. A small animal head, likely bovine, rises in slight relief at each corner of the square socle’s otherwise undecorated top.
Bronze casting came fully into its own in China during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 BC–c. 1046 BC) with the production of sacral vessels intended for use in funerary ceremonies. Those vessels include ones for food and wine as well as ones for water; those for food and wine, the types most frequently encountered, group themselves into storage and presentation vessels as well as heating, cooking, and serving vessels. A sacral vessel for serving offerings of cooked cereal grains, the gui first appeared during the Shang dynasty and continued well into the Zhou (c. 1046 BC–256 BC).
Although standard vessel shapes and established decorative motifs both persisted after the fall of Shang, the people of Western Zhou (c. 1046 BC–771 BC) quickly introduced changes, perhaps reflecting differing religious beliefs and ceremonial practices; as a result, already at the beginning of the Western Zhou, some vessel types disappeared, particularly wine vessels, while others evolved, often becoming more elaborate and more imposing. Tradition asserts that the new Zhou ruler, King Wu (r. c. 1046– c. 1043 BC) believed that excessive wine drinking by the Shang had led to decadence and failure to maintain proper observance of sacred rituals—and thus to the fall of the dynasty; in that context, King Wu claimed that ancestral spirits had shifted their mandate to rule to the Zhou and required that more sober ritual practices be observed for the Zhou to maintain the “mandate of heaven”. Therefore, the use of wine was reduced while meat and cereal grains were emphasized as more righteous offerings. As a result, many types of wine vessels were gradually abandoned during the Western Zhou. Although the bowl of this gui food-serving vessel follows the basic Shang interpretation of the form, the addition of the socle and the reliance upon ribbed decoration reflects the new, post-Shang age in which this vessel was produced.
The standard Shang form of the gui—a compressed, globular bowl set on a circular footing, the bowl with a lightly flaring neck and two visually substantial, vertically oriented, loop handles—continued into the Western Zhou, though modifications in both form and decoration soon ensued. The most obvious alteration to the form involved elevating the vessel, often by presenting it on an integrally cast square socle, as in the present example, but occasionally by setting it on four legs, as witnessed by the Zuo Bao Yi Gui, which sold at Christie’s, New York, on 13 September 2018 (lot 888).3 Aesthetically, the elevation of the gui on a socle makes the vessel more imposing and imparts monumentality, solemnity, and even majesty. Even so, the reasons for raising the vessels remain unknown but could involve changes in religious needs or ceremonial requirements, for example, or perhaps a simple desire for greater visual impact.
Favored throughout much of the Western Zhou (c. 1046–771 BC), socled gui vessels declined in popularity during the last decades of the Middle Western Zhou period (c. 975–c. 875 BC). Even so, gui vessels themselves continued to be important, but rather than resting on a square socle, they came to stand either on a circular footring or, more typically, on three short legs generally in the form of a stylized animal or bird, with a masklike face at the top and a clawed foot at the bottom, or occasionally, if rarely, in the form of a simple tab. Such gui vessels tended to be decorated with wide horizontal flutes rather than with vertical ribs.
Although the taotie mask was the decorative motif most frequently encountered on bronze ritual vessels from the Shang dynasty, including gui vessels, other motifs were popular as well, including long- and short-tailed birds, kui dragons, and even snakes. Apart from those “representational” motifs, a variety of abstract, non-representational, geometric motifs also appear on Shang bronzes, including interlocking T-forms, zig-zag, or chevron, patterns, diamond-and-boss patterns, and yet others. Long forgotten, the meaning of such decorative schemes, if any, has been lost to the mists of time for both representational and geometric types—including that of the vertical ribs on the present gui vessel—though speculation about their meanings abounds. Many such motifs continued into the Western Zhou.
Decoration of vertical ribs —occasionally also termed zhewen, or “pleats” or “creases”, in Chinese—appeared only at the very end of the Shang, gaining popularity during the Western Zhou.4 Arguably the earliest Western Zhou vessel with a mature presentation of ribbed décor is the famous Kang Hou Gui, formerly in the collection of Neill Malcolm (1869–1953) and now in British Museum, London (1977.404.1).5 Dated to the eleventh century BC, the Kang Hou Gui boasts a band of vertical ribs around its midsection and a narrow band of alternating whirligig bosses and flower-like motifs around its neck and another around its footring. In fact, the present vessel’s decorative style is closely related to that of the Kang Hou Gui, though the latter lacks a square socle and its handles are much larger more assertive. Despite those differences, the similarity of the present vessel to the Kang Hou Gui confirms that it too dates to the Early Western Zhou period.
Decoration with vertical ribs of course was not limited to gui vessels, whether those with a square socle or those with a circular footring; in fact, Western Zhou vessels in functional types other than the gui occasionally also incorporated bands of vertical ribs into their decorative schemes, as evinced by the you wine vessel and associated, but independently cast, socle in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (24.72.2a–c)6 and by the Mu Xin Zun wine vessel—formerly in the collection of Julius Eberhardt (of Vienna, Austria)—which features a narrow band of vertical ribs around its midsection.7
In general, the earliest Western Zhou socled gui vessels feature the same decorative motif on both bowl and socle, typically a taotie mask, confronting birds, or other animals, as evinced by the Early Western Zhou socled gui discovered in 1976 in the Lintong district of Xi’an8 or by the well-known example in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums (1944.57.12).9 Even so, a few of the earliest Western Zhou socled gui vessels feature a panel of vertical ribs on each face of the base but a different motif on the bowl, often an abstract, non-representational pattern, as seen in the Shanghai Museum’s Jia Gui,10 the large, four-handled gui in the Hakutsuru Fine Art Museum in Kobe, Japan,11 and the large, four-handled gui in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (1954.26.1),12 each of which features a diamond-and-spike pattern on the bowl and a dense panel of vertical ribs on each face of the socle.
When first introduced as decoration around the bowl’s belly on socled gui vessels, ribbed decoration was usually accompanied by subsidiary bands around the neck and footring of stylized dragons, of birds, of snakes, or of such abstract designs as whirligig bosses and stylized-flower motifs, as evinced by the present socled gui. In such vessels, a single horizontal panel of vertical ribs surrounded by other design elements typically appeared at the center of each face of the square socle, as witnessed by the present vessel and by the Early Western Zhou Niaowen Fangzuo Gui in the collection of the Shanghai Museum.13
By the Middle Western Zhou period (c. 975–c. 875 BC) vertical ribs had assumed greater prominence and occasionally served as a gui vessel’s sole decorative motif, to the exclusion of subsidiary bands of dragons, birds, and abstract motifs around the neck and footring. A socled gui embellished solely with vertical ribs on both bowl and socle is in the collection of the Shanghai Museum,14 for example, and a pair of virtually identical gui vessels—their covers also sporting a dense pattern of ribs—sold at Christie’s, New York, on 13 September 2019 (Lot 831).15
Just as the socled gui fell from favor late in the late Western Zhou period (c. 875–771 BC), so did vertical ribs virtually disappear from the repertory of decorative motifs at that time. The new style of gui vessel, popular through the late Western Zhou period and beyond, had the bowl resting either on a circular footring or on three short legs and sporting decoration of horizontal flutes around both bowl and cover, as exemplified by the Shi Song Gui in the collection of the Shanghai Museum (45688)16 and two such gui in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1975.66.1a, b and 1988.20.3a, b).17
The present vessel shows close kinship to five other well-known socled gui vessels that date to the Western Zhou period: one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (fig. 1),18 one in the Shanghai Museum,19 one in the Sumitomo Collection 住友コレクション at the Sen-oku Hakuko Kan, Kyoto,20 one in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (V.2007.128),21 and one in the U.S. National Museum of Asian Art’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC (S1987.342).22
Formerly in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, this socled gui vessel claims a distinguished provenance. And as a visually compelling and strikingly beautiful bronze with bold decoration and exquisite patina, it is art-historically important for its reinterpretation of the traditional gui form through the elevation of the bowl on a square socle and through the perfection of abstract, ribbed décor. This new interpretation signals the final break with the stylistic legacy of the previous Shang dynasty and the establishment of a distinctive Zhou-dynasty mode.
1 Robert W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Washington, DC: The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation and Cambridge, MA: Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University), 1987, p. 521, no. 103.
2 Chen Peifen, Xia Shang Zhou Qingtongqi Yanjiu: Shanghai Bowuguan Cangpin [Research on Bronzes from the Xia Shang and Zhou Dynasties: Collection of the Shanghai Museum] (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe), 2004, 1st ed., Western Zhou, vol. 1, p. 72, no. 225
3 See: Christie’s, New York, Qianlong’s Precious Vessel: The Zuo Bao Yi Gui, 13 September 2018 (New York: Christie’s), 2018, lot 888.
4 See: Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1987, pp. 520-533, no. 103.
5 See: Jessica Rawson, Chinese Bronzes: Art and Ritual (London: British Museum Publications), 1987, p. 78, no. 22; Jessica Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, and Cambridge, MA: Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University), 1990, p. 26, fig. 15.
6 See: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42165?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=24.72.2a%E2%80%93c&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1
7 See: Tao Wang, ed., Mirroring China’s Past: Emperors, Scholars, and Their Bronzes (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago), 2018, p. 204, 248, no. 139; Regina Krahl, Sammlung Julius Eberhardt: Frühe chinesiche Kunst / Collection Julius Eberhardt: Early Chinese Art, vol. 1, pp. 94-95, no. 38; Sotheby’s, New York, Magnificent Ritual Bronzes, 17 September 2013 (New York: Sotheby’s), 2013, lot 5..
8 See: Wen C. Fong et al., The Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People’s Republic of China (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1980, pp. 203-204, 215, no. 41; also see: Ma Chengyuan , Ancient Chinese Bronzes (Oxford, Hong Kong, New York: Oxford University Press), 1986, ed. Hsio-yen Shih, p. 110, Plate 35.
9 See: Max Loehr, Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China (New York: Asia Society), 1968, pp. 112-113, no. 48.
10 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 68-70, no. 224; Hayashi Minao, Yin Zhou Shidai Qingtongqi Zonglan: Shang Zhou Shidai Qingtongqu zhi Yanjiu [An Overview of Shang and Zhou Bronzes: Research on Shang and Zhou Bronzes] (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe), 2017, vol. 1, Plates, Western Zhou, p. 93, gui no. 101 (translation into Chinese by Hirose Kunio and Kondo Karuka of the original 1984 Japanese edition In Shū Jidai Seidōki no Kenkyū published by [Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan])
11 See: Hayashi Minao, Yin Zhou Shidai Qingtongqi Zonglan, 2017, Western Zhou, p. 92, gui no. 97.
12 See: George J. Lee, Selected Far Eastern Art in the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 1970, p. 121, no. 236.
13 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 71-72, no. 225.
14 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 277-278, no. 313.
15 See: Christie’s, New York, Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 13 September 2019 (New York: Christie’s), 2019, pp. 56-65, Lot 831.
16 See: Tao Wang, ed., Mirroring China’s Past, 2018, pp. 112, 244, no. 61; Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 2, pp. 455-459, no. 381.
17See,respectively:https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/61310?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=gui&offset=0&rpp=80&pos=23 and https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44514?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=gui&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=7
18 See: See: Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1990, p. 369, fig. 39-2; also see: https://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/item/00/0c/c0/36.html
19 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 71-72, no. 225.
20 See: Sen-oku Hakukokan, ed., Sen-oku Hakko: Chūgoku kodōki hen [Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Sen-oku Hakko Collection: The Sumitomo Collection] (Kyoto: Sen-oku Hakkokan), 2002, pp. 31 and 191, no. 29; also see: Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1990, p. 369, fig. 39-1.
21 See: https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/collection-search-results/gui/693215
22 See: Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1990, pp. 368-369, no. 39.
A Rare and Important Western Zhou Fangzuogui Vessel
Robert D. Mowry
Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus,
Harvard Art Museums, and Senior Consultant, Christie’s
Exceptionally rare, this gui food-serving vessel is art-historically important for its elevation of the bowl on an integrally cast, square socle and for its reliance on vertical ribs as its principal decorative motif, thereby advancing a newly introduced interpretation of the vessel type; the ribbed décor combined with the tall, square socle, or base, signals a break with the stylistic legacy of the previous Shang dynasty and the establishment of a distinctive Zhou-dynasty mode. As such, the vessel joins a small group of other socled gui vessels with rib décor produced in the early Western Zhou period (c. 1050–c. 975 BC). Apart from its art-historical importance, this gui vessel also has a very distinguished provenance, having previously been in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.
A large sacral vessel for serving cooked millet, sorghum, rice, or other grains, this bronze gui vessel comprises a circular bowl set on a tall, square socle, or base. The bowl, or container portion of the vessel, has an S-profile that terminates in a lightly flaring lip that thickens at its outer edge; it is set on a canted, circular footring. Integrally cast with the bowl, the hollow, square socle elevates and supports the bowl. A loop handle issues from the stylized head of a horned animal on either side of the bowl’s neck, each handle immediately circling downward and connecting to the bowl just above the footring. The dense band of vertical ribs encircling the bowl’s belly constitutes the vessel’s principal decorative motif; even so, the ribs are not used alone, but, in typical Early Western Zhou fashion, appear in concert with such subsidiary motifs as the kui dragons, or kuilong, that stride around the splayed footring and the whirligig bosses that alternate with flower-like motifs in the narrow band encircling the neck—as Robert W. Bagley has termed those design elements.1 (Chinese authors typically refer to the whirligig bosses and flower-like motifs as “fire and four-petal eye motifs”, sometimes as “fire and four-leaf motifs”2, and occasionally as “whirlpool and four-leaf motifs”.) Each side of the square socle sports a horizontal panel of vertical ribs bordered above and below by a pair of confronting kuilong and on either side by a single, vertically set kuilong, the single kui dragons striding upward but turning their heads back to face their tails. Although the kui dragons on the base rise in slight relief against a background of finely cast leiwen, or squared spirals, the decorative motifs in the bands above and below the bowl’s central register of ribs rise in slight relief against an unembellished ground. A small animal head, likely bovine, rises in slight relief at each corner of the square socle’s otherwise undecorated top.
Bronze casting came fully into its own in China during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 BC–c. 1046 BC) with the production of sacral vessels intended for use in funerary ceremonies. Those vessels include ones for food and wine as well as ones for water; those for food and wine, the types most frequently encountered, group themselves into storage and presentation vessels as well as heating, cooking, and serving vessels. A sacral vessel for serving offerings of cooked cereal grains, the gui first appeared during the Shang dynasty and continued well into the Zhou (c. 1046 BC–256 BC).
Although standard vessel shapes and established decorative motifs both persisted after the fall of Shang, the people of Western Zhou (c. 1046 BC–771 BC) quickly introduced changes, perhaps reflecting differing religious beliefs and ceremonial practices; as a result, already at the beginning of the Western Zhou, some vessel types disappeared, particularly wine vessels, while others evolved, often becoming more elaborate and more imposing. Tradition asserts that the new Zhou ruler, King Wu (r. c. 1046– c. 1043 BC) believed that excessive wine drinking by the Shang had led to decadence and failure to maintain proper observance of sacred rituals—and thus to the fall of the dynasty; in that context, King Wu claimed that ancestral spirits had shifted their mandate to rule to the Zhou and required that more sober ritual practices be observed for the Zhou to maintain the “mandate of heaven”. Therefore, the use of wine was reduced while meat and cereal grains were emphasized as more righteous offerings. As a result, many types of wine vessels were gradually abandoned during the Western Zhou. Although the bowl of this gui food-serving vessel follows the basic Shang interpretation of the form, the addition of the socle and the reliance upon ribbed decoration reflects the new, post-Shang age in which this vessel was produced.
The standard Shang form of the gui—a compressed, globular bowl set on a circular footing, the bowl with a lightly flaring neck and two visually substantial, vertically oriented, loop handles—continued into the Western Zhou, though modifications in both form and decoration soon ensued. The most obvious alteration to the form involved elevating the vessel, often by presenting it on an integrally cast square socle, as in the present example, but occasionally by setting it on four legs, as witnessed by the Zuo Bao Yi Gui, which sold at Christie’s, New York, on 13 September 2018 (lot 888).3 Aesthetically, the elevation of the gui on a socle makes the vessel more imposing and imparts monumentality, solemnity, and even majesty. Even so, the reasons for raising the vessels remain unknown but could involve changes in religious needs or ceremonial requirements, for example, or perhaps a simple desire for greater visual impact.
Favored throughout much of the Western Zhou (c. 1046–771 BC), socled gui vessels declined in popularity during the last decades of the Middle Western Zhou period (c. 975–c. 875 BC). Even so, gui vessels themselves continued to be important, but rather than resting on a square socle, they came to stand either on a circular footring or, more typically, on three short legs generally in the form of a stylized animal or bird, with a masklike face at the top and a clawed foot at the bottom, or occasionally, if rarely, in the form of a simple tab. Such gui vessels tended to be decorated with wide horizontal flutes rather than with vertical ribs.
Although the taotie mask was the decorative motif most frequently encountered on bronze ritual vessels from the Shang dynasty, including gui vessels, other motifs were popular as well, including long- and short-tailed birds, kui dragons, and even snakes. Apart from those “representational” motifs, a variety of abstract, non-representational, geometric motifs also appear on Shang bronzes, including interlocking T-forms, zig-zag, or chevron, patterns, diamond-and-boss patterns, and yet others. Long forgotten, the meaning of such decorative schemes, if any, has been lost to the mists of time for both representational and geometric types—including that of the vertical ribs on the present gui vessel—though speculation about their meanings abounds. Many such motifs continued into the Western Zhou.
Decoration of vertical ribs —occasionally also termed zhewen, or “pleats” or “creases”, in Chinese—appeared only at the very end of the Shang, gaining popularity during the Western Zhou.4 Arguably the earliest Western Zhou vessel with a mature presentation of ribbed décor is the famous Kang Hou Gui, formerly in the collection of Neill Malcolm (1869–1953) and now in British Museum, London (1977.404.1).5 Dated to the eleventh century BC, the Kang Hou Gui boasts a band of vertical ribs around its midsection and a narrow band of alternating whirligig bosses and flower-like motifs around its neck and another around its footring. In fact, the present vessel’s decorative style is closely related to that of the Kang Hou Gui, though the latter lacks a square socle and its handles are much larger more assertive. Despite those differences, the similarity of the present vessel to the Kang Hou Gui confirms that it too dates to the Early Western Zhou period.
Decoration with vertical ribs of course was not limited to gui vessels, whether those with a square socle or those with a circular footring; in fact, Western Zhou vessels in functional types other than the gui occasionally also incorporated bands of vertical ribs into their decorative schemes, as evinced by the you wine vessel and associated, but independently cast, socle in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (24.72.2a–c)6 and by the Mu Xin Zun wine vessel—formerly in the collection of Julius Eberhardt (of Vienna, Austria)—which features a narrow band of vertical ribs around its midsection.7
In general, the earliest Western Zhou socled gui vessels feature the same decorative motif on both bowl and socle, typically a taotie mask, confronting birds, or other animals, as evinced by the Early Western Zhou socled gui discovered in 1976 in the Lintong district of Xi’an8 or by the well-known example in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums (1944.57.12).9 Even so, a few of the earliest Western Zhou socled gui vessels feature a panel of vertical ribs on each face of the base but a different motif on the bowl, often an abstract, non-representational pattern, as seen in the Shanghai Museum’s Jia Gui,10 the large, four-handled gui in the Hakutsuru Fine Art Museum in Kobe, Japan,11 and the large, four-handled gui in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (1954.26.1),12 each of which features a diamond-and-spike pattern on the bowl and a dense panel of vertical ribs on each face of the socle.
When first introduced as decoration around the bowl’s belly on socled gui vessels, ribbed decoration was usually accompanied by subsidiary bands around the neck and footring of stylized dragons, of birds, of snakes, or of such abstract designs as whirligig bosses and stylized-flower motifs, as evinced by the present socled gui. In such vessels, a single horizontal panel of vertical ribs surrounded by other design elements typically appeared at the center of each face of the square socle, as witnessed by the present vessel and by the Early Western Zhou Niaowen Fangzuo Gui in the collection of the Shanghai Museum.13
By the Middle Western Zhou period (c. 975–c. 875 BC) vertical ribs had assumed greater prominence and occasionally served as a gui vessel’s sole decorative motif, to the exclusion of subsidiary bands of dragons, birds, and abstract motifs around the neck and footring. A socled gui embellished solely with vertical ribs on both bowl and socle is in the collection of the Shanghai Museum,14 for example, and a pair of virtually identical gui vessels—their covers also sporting a dense pattern of ribs—sold at Christie’s, New York, on 13 September 2019 (Lot 831).15
Just as the socled gui fell from favor late in the late Western Zhou period (c. 875–771 BC), so did vertical ribs virtually disappear from the repertory of decorative motifs at that time. The new style of gui vessel, popular through the late Western Zhou period and beyond, had the bowl resting either on a circular footring or on three short legs and sporting decoration of horizontal flutes around both bowl and cover, as exemplified by the Shi Song Gui in the collection of the Shanghai Museum (45688)16 and two such gui in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1975.66.1a, b and 1988.20.3a, b).17
The present vessel shows close kinship to five other well-known socled gui vessels that date to the Western Zhou period: one in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (fig. 1),18 one in the Shanghai Museum,19 one in the Sumitomo Collection 住友コレクション at the Sen-oku Hakuko Kan, Kyoto,20 one in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (V.2007.128),21 and one in the U.S. National Museum of Asian Art’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC (S1987.342).22
Formerly in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, this socled gui vessel claims a distinguished provenance. And as a visually compelling and strikingly beautiful bronze with bold decoration and exquisite patina, it is art-historically important for its reinterpretation of the traditional gui form through the elevation of the bowl on a square socle and through the perfection of abstract, ribbed décor. This new interpretation signals the final break with the stylistic legacy of the previous Shang dynasty and the establishment of a distinctive Zhou-dynasty mode.
1 Robert W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Washington, DC: The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation and Cambridge, MA: Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University), 1987, p. 521, no. 103.
2 Chen Peifen, Xia Shang Zhou Qingtongqi Yanjiu: Shanghai Bowuguan Cangpin [Research on Bronzes from the Xia Shang and Zhou Dynasties: Collection of the Shanghai Museum] (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe), 2004, 1st ed., Western Zhou, vol. 1, p. 72, no. 225
3 See: Christie’s, New York, Qianlong’s Precious Vessel: The Zuo Bao Yi Gui, 13 September 2018 (New York: Christie’s), 2018, lot 888.
4 See: Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1987, pp. 520-533, no. 103.
5 See: Jessica Rawson, Chinese Bronzes: Art and Ritual (London: British Museum Publications), 1987, p. 78, no. 22; Jessica Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, and Cambridge, MA: Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University), 1990, p. 26, fig. 15.
6 See: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42165?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=24.72.2a%E2%80%93c&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1
7 See: Tao Wang, ed., Mirroring China’s Past: Emperors, Scholars, and Their Bronzes (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago), 2018, p. 204, 248, no. 139; Regina Krahl, Sammlung Julius Eberhardt: Frühe chinesiche Kunst / Collection Julius Eberhardt: Early Chinese Art, vol. 1, pp. 94-95, no. 38; Sotheby’s, New York, Magnificent Ritual Bronzes, 17 September 2013 (New York: Sotheby’s), 2013, lot 5..
8 See: Wen C. Fong et al., The Great Bronze Age of China: An Exhibition from the People’s Republic of China (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art), 1980, pp. 203-204, 215, no. 41; also see: Ma Chengyuan , Ancient Chinese Bronzes (Oxford, Hong Kong, New York: Oxford University Press), 1986, ed. Hsio-yen Shih, p. 110, Plate 35.
9 See: Max Loehr, Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China (New York: Asia Society), 1968, pp. 112-113, no. 48.
10 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 68-70, no. 224; Hayashi Minao, Yin Zhou Shidai Qingtongqi Zonglan: Shang Zhou Shidai Qingtongqu zhi Yanjiu [An Overview of Shang and Zhou Bronzes: Research on Shang and Zhou Bronzes] (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe), 2017, vol. 1, Plates, Western Zhou, p. 93, gui no. 101 (translation into Chinese by Hirose Kunio and Kondo Karuka of the original 1984 Japanese edition In Shū Jidai Seidōki no Kenkyū published by [Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan])
11 See: Hayashi Minao, Yin Zhou Shidai Qingtongqi Zonglan, 2017, Western Zhou, p. 92, gui no. 97.
12 See: George J. Lee, Selected Far Eastern Art in the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 1970, p. 121, no. 236.
13 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 71-72, no. 225.
14 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 277-278, no. 313.
15 See: Christie’s, New York, Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 13 September 2019 (New York: Christie’s), 2019, pp. 56-65, Lot 831.
16 See: Tao Wang, ed., Mirroring China’s Past, 2018, pp. 112, 244, no. 61; Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 2, pp. 455-459, no. 381.
17See,respectively:https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/61310?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=gui&offset=0&rpp=80&pos=23 and https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44514?&searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=gui&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=7
18 See: See: Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1990, p. 369, fig. 39-2; also see: https://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/item/00/0c/c0/36.html
19 See: Chen Peifen, 2004, Western Zhou, vol. 1, pp. 71-72, no. 225.
20 See: Sen-oku Hakukokan, ed., Sen-oku Hakko: Chūgoku kodōki hen [Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Sen-oku Hakko Collection: The Sumitomo Collection] (Kyoto: Sen-oku Hakkokan), 2002, pp. 31 and 191, no. 29; also see: Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1990, p. 369, fig. 39-1.
21 See: https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/collection-search-results/gui/693215
22 See: Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 1990, pp. 368-369, no. 39.