CHINE, DYNASTIE QING, XVIIIEME-XIXEME SIECLE

Bronze vessels inlaid with silver first appeared during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-256 BC), and while the form of the current vessel is based on that of an archaic bronze hu of the Warring States period (475-221 BC), the technique of inlay, the large, decorative handles, and high-relief cast elements clearly place the vessel at a much later date. The method of inlay on the current lot, executed by setting silver into recessed wells within the raised elements of the design, is also a later technique, as inlay on archaic bronzes was typically executed by setting the material directly into the wall of the vessel.

Compare a smaller (43.5 cm. high) archaistic bronze hu from the Clague Collection, worked in damascened overlays of silver and gold and dated to the late 18th or 19th century, illustrated by R.D. Mowry, China's Renaissance in Bronze: The Robert H. Clague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900, Phoenix Art Museum, 1993, p. 194, no. 42.