LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 12TH CENTURY BC

The bronze gong is one of the wine vessel types that appeared during the Anyang period of the Shang dynasty without being based on earlier ceramic prototypes, and by the middle of the Western Zhou dynasty it had disappeared. The shape of the vessel facilitated pouring the wine, while the cover sealed in warmth and kept out contaminants. These ritual wine vessels, with their fascinating zoomorphic imagery, share the same general shape, with some of rectangular form rather than the more graceful oval section of the present vessel, and have either the head of a tiger or a dragon, and in a few instances a bovine, forming the front of the cover.

Gong can vary quite dramatically in the arrangement of the decoration. On some, there are horizontal and vertical divisions created by vertical flanges on the body, such as the gong illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 27 - Bronze Ritual Vessels and Musical Instruments, Hong Kong, 2006, p. 140, no. 89, while on others the decoration on the sides of the body is a direct continuation of the animal on the cover, such as the example from Xiaotun Locus North, at Yinxu, Anyang, Henan province included in the exhibition, The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology, National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 1999-2000, pp. 170-2, no. 49. In a few instances, such as the present gong, and an example, which retains its cover, in the Norton Gallery and School of Art, illustrated by M. Loehr, Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China, The Asia Society, New York, 1960, no. 34, the stylized body of the dragon continues down from the cover onto the vessel, which has additional zoomorphic designs arranged in quadrants.