Lot Essay
Two nearly identical supports are in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. See The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, New York, 1993, p. 280 (bottom left); and Seiichi Mizuno, Bronzes and Jades of Ancient China, Tokyo, 1959, pl. 14. And another pair from the David Weill Collection and now in the collection of the Musée Guimet is illustrated by C. Delacour, De bronze, d'or et d'argent: Arts somptuaires de la Chine, Paris, 2001, pp. 118-19.
According to Bishop W.C. White, Tombs of Old Lo-yang, Shanghai, 1934, p. 89 and pls. LIII and LIV, eight of these supports, which he identifies as the legs of two low tables, were said to have been found in 1928 in tomb no. 7 of the royal necropolis of the Zhou in Jincun, in the vicinity of Luoyang. While no fragments of the wooden part of any table were preserved, large pieces of thick lacquer laid on a canvas base were discovered, which may have been the original surface of such tables.
According to Bishop W.C. White, Tombs of Old Lo-yang, Shanghai, 1934, p. 89 and pls. LIII and LIV, eight of these supports, which he identifies as the legs of two low tables, were said to have been found in 1928 in tomb no. 7 of the royal necropolis of the Zhou in Jincun, in the vicinity of Luoyang. While no fragments of the wooden part of any table were preserved, large pieces of thick lacquer laid on a canvas base were discovered, which may have been the original surface of such tables.