MID-SHANG DYNASTY, MID-15TH-13TH CENTURY BC

This rare ding is distinguished by its unusually shallow bowl combined with relatively short legs cast as dragons balanced on curved tails and grasping the body of the vessel with their gaping mouths. Another distinguishing feature is the crisply cast band of three pairs of birds with back-turned heads and stylized bodies and crests, all between narrow bands of linked circles. Such bird decoration is exceptionally rare, as most early bronze ding feature taotie designs.

The present ding is extremely rare and appears to be one of the only two known examples in the West. The other known ding is in the Honolulu Academy of Arts and illustrated by R. J. Poor in Ancient Chinese Bronzes, Ceramics and Jade in the Collection of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, 1979, pp. 58-9, no. 18. (Fig. 1) The Honolulu ding exhibits identical proportions and decoration, but is of slightly smaller size (17.8 cm. diam.), The close similarity of the Honolulu ding and the Shouyang Studio example suggests they might be from the same group. In his discussion of a 15th-14th-century BC bronze ding with flat dragon legs in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington, D.C., 1987, p. 448, fig. 80.2, R. W. Bagley illustrates the Honolulu ding, along with three other bronze ding with flat dragon legs, to represent successive stages in the development of this bronze type. The fact that the Sackler bronze ding and the other three bronze ding illustrated by Bagley are decorated with bands of taotie masks further demonstrates the rarity of the bird decoration on the Shouyang Studio ding.