Page 25 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

nothing of the vessel's date or circumstance of manufacture; rather, like
the vessel itself, the inscription follows the form and style of inscriptions
on bronzes from the Western Zhou era. The inscription seems to translate:
Bo Si (?) Hao made [this] gui [vessel] [for his] esteemed forebears
[characters illegible/meaning unclear] to treasure. [May generations
of] sons and grandsons forever value [and] use [it].

It remains uncertain whether the inscription was newly composed
(in ancient style) when the bronze was made or whether it repeats one
copied from a Zhou-dynasty vessel. Parts of a name, the first and third
characters (Bo and Hao), occur frequently in inscriptions on Western Zhou
bronzes, as do those of the last sentence, a standard component of most
Western Zhou inscriptions. The inclusion of the character gui is curious,
since the Clague vessel is clearly a hu rather than a gui (a two-handled,
deep, bowl-like vessel that, in antiquity, was used for serving boiled grain,
probably millet). The misnaming of the vessel suggests that the inscription
was likely appropriated from an antique gui vessel, the designer either not
recognizing the incompatibility of name and shape, or mistakenly assuming
gui to be a generic name for 'ritual vessel.' Several characters appear to
be incorrectly written, illustrating the difficulty in copying bronze script, a
new field of scholarly inquiry at the time.
The hu - along with the ding, gui, gu, and zun - rank among the earliest
antique bronze-vessel shapes revived in the Song. Popular in bronze, hu-
shaped vessels were also produced in ceramic ware during the Southern
9
Song period, especially in guan ware intended for the imperial court. With
their thick, concealing, opaque, grayish-blue glazes, guan-ware examples
seldom have surface decoration but they typically possess hollow, cylindri-
cal appendages at the neck reminiscent of those on Shang-dynasty bronzes
[see discussion, 4].
In Song fashion, the vessel was made in four parts joined together
after casting: body (including the foot), neck, and two handles. The small
step at its base marks the lowest portion of the neck visible on the exte-
rior; barely detectable on the exterior, the joining of neck and body is clearly
indicated on the interior by a short lip on the bottom of the neck that pro-
jects downward into the body, anchoring the neck in place. (The need to
secure neck to body might imbue the flat shoulder with a structural func-
tion aside from its aesthetic one.) Although the two pieces fit snugly
together, technical analysis will doubtless reveal that long-term bonding
of the two pieces relies more on a touch of applied molten metal than on

T H E R O B E R T II. C L A G U E C O L L E C T I O N 2 1