WARRING STATES PERIOD, 5TH-4TH CENTURY BC

This rare bronze beast-form lamp was almost certainly originally fitted with a human figure seated astride the animal’s back. With arms outstretched, the figure would have supported a tubular socket intended to receive the stem of the shallow oil tray. A closely related example, excavated in 1965 at Changzhi, Shanxi Province, and now in the Shanxi Provincial Museum, depicts the beast standing foursquare rather than recumbent, with a human attendant mounted on its back grasping a similar tubular support beneath a shallow, rimmed tray. The piece is illustrated in Zhongguo Wenwu Jinghua Dachuan (Highlights of Chinese Archaeological Objects), Hong Kong, 1994, p. 253, no. 904.

The Shanxi bronze was also published by T. Lawton in Chinese Art of the Warring States Period: Change and Continuity, 480–222 B.C., Washington, D.C., pp. 78-9, no. 36, in conjunction with his discussion of a comparable bronze beast in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution. Lawton observed that the Freer example shows no evidence of having supported a human figure or having served a related functional purpose. Nevertheless, all three beasts share closely comparable features, including intricate surface decoration and distinctive cowrie-shell collars.