Page 21 - March 16, 2017 Chinese Art, The Harris Collection, Christies

808 PROVENANCE
A BRONZE POLE FINIAL
LATE SHANG DYNASTY, ANYANG, 12TH-11TH CENTURY Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 11 May 1978, lot 13.
BC The Erwin Harris Collection, Miami, Florida.

The upper section is cast in relief on both sides with a taotie Compare the two pole fnials of this type, each similarly
mask fanked by ears below a pair of large up-curved horns, and surmounted by a pair of curved, scale-cast horns above
the conical lower section is fat cast with simplifed taotie masks. a mask: the frst illustrated by B. Karlgren in a Catalogue
The bronze has a smooth, mottled olive-green patina and traces of the Chinese Bronzes in the Alfred F. Pillsbury Collection,
of cinnabar. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1950, pl. 96, no. 73, has, like
4º in. (11 cm.) high, stand the Harris fnial, a taotie mask; the other in the Frederick M.
Mayer Collection, sold at Christie’s London, 24-25 June 1974,
$4,000-6,000 lot 221, has a human mask. See, also, the example with taotie
mask illustrated in “The Exhibition of Early Chinese Bronzes,”
B.M.F.E.A., No. 6, Stockholm, 1934, pl. V (3), which was found
at Anyang.

商晚期 青銅牛首形仗首

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