Page 23 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

HIS IMPRESSIVE FANGHU, OR SQUARE HU, rests on a well articu-
lated square foot with rounded corners; constricting gently above
T the foot, the walls rise to form the vessel's softly swelling body, ter-
minating in a flat shoulder from which springs the modestly flaring square
neck. Strapwork moldings - the vertical ones with medial crests - divide the
surface of the ovoid body into four decorative panels; each round-cornered
panel extends from the midpoint of one face to the midpoint of the adjacent
one, wrapping around the vessel's corners. A tightly woven pattern of tiny
interlaced stylized dragons - sometimes called a silkworm pattern - enlivens
the decorative panels. Originally supporting moveable (but now lost) bronze
rings, two loop handles orient the vessel right and left, their curved tubular
lower halves issuing from the mouths of mythical animal heads. On the
lower half of the neck are two taotie masks, one each front and back, with
the bodies of the mythical beast continuing around the corners onto the
sides. Set against a finely cast leiwen, or squared spiral, ground, the lightly
modeled taotie masks lack vertical flanges, though their nose ridges echo
the medial crests of the vertical strapwork moldings below. The upper
half of the neck is undecorated, mirroring the plain foot and harmonizing
with the unornamented strapwork. A flat, low-relief band traverses the
otherwise plain base - at a level corresponding on the exterior to the top
of the constricted foot - in a 'handle to handle' orientation. The vessel
might originally have had a low, domed cover with a knob at its center.
With its well ordered strapwork bands, this vessel recalls a style of
surface organization that appeared in the middle Western Zhou and then
enjoyed a measure of popularity in the late Western Zhou period, espe-
1
cially on hu vessels. As exemplified by a pair of large covered hu vessels 2
dating to the ninth or early eighth century BC, in the Charlotte C. and
John C. Weber Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
typologically related vessels from late Western Zhou typically feature a
more elaborate strapwork pattern that divides the vessel surface into
eight decorative panels, that boasts a high-relief geometric ornament at
the crossing of its vertical and horizontal members, and that has flat bands
rather than the medially crested ones of the Clague vessel. Newly intro-
duced in Song times, the crisply-defined flat shoulder of the Clague vessel
does not appear in hu vessels of the late Western Zhou, which character-
istically exhibit elongated pear shapes with organically curving profiles.
With its taotie masks on the neck and its interlaced dragons in the
body panels, the surface ornament on the Clague hu differs markedly
from that on Western Zhou vessels with strapwork decoration, which

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