Page 37 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

Shang hu vessels are generally elliptical in section (with flattened
sides); square ones, usually with rounded corners, and circular ones 4 predom-
inated during the Western Zhou, while circular ones and square ones with
angular corners found favor during the Warring States and Han periods. 5
Octagonal and decagonal hu vessels appear occasionally among the bronzes
of the Warring States period; 6 hexagonal ones are virtually unknown.
This vase shows a kinship to ceramics of the late Southern Song and
Yuan periods in the graceful interpretation of its shape, in the faceting of
its body, in the division of its surface into horizontal registers, and in its
preference for all-over decoration. During most of the Song dynasty ceramic
vessels were circular or lobed in section, but in the Yuan a secondary, parallel
taste emerged for polygonal vessels, evinced by several fourteenth-century
blue-and-white octagonal bottles and jars from Jingdezhen 7 and by celadon-
glazed octagonal vases from Longquan. 8 Such fourteenth-century ceramics
usually claim all-over decoration; tall examples such as bottles, vases, and
jars, characteristically have their decoration arranged in a series of themat-
9
ically unrelated horizontal registers. The lack of emphasis on one register
as the primary band of decoration suggests that this bronze is typologically
earlier than the fourteenth-century ceramics which almost always feature
one register of decoration as the principal register, usually set off by its
slightly larger size or more engaging subject matter. Indeed, a bronze hu
with a dated inscription corresponding to 1173 in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, reveals both that bronzes were already being divided into
horizontal registers as early as the twelfth century and that such bronzes
did not necessarily emphasize one register over another. 10 Given that many
Yuan-dynasty ceramics derive their shapes from contemporaneous bronzes,
the possibility thus exists that they also owe their horizontal registration to
their congeners in bronze. Song and Yuan bronzes may well owe their hori-
zontally sectioned surfaces to the organization of the decorative schemes
on Shang bronze vessels of the Anyang phase.
The source of the decoration on this vase has yet to be pinpointed.
The only motif that bears a clear relationship to that on archaic bronzes is
the pattern of rising lappets in the topmost register, a pattern doubtless
inspired by the triangular elements - sometimes meticulously rendered as
cicadas - that appear in the uppermost register of many Shang bronzes. 11
Although the leiwen pattern in the fourth register certainly derives from
the leiwen backgrounds on Shang and early Zhou bronzes, the leiwen
pattern seldom, if ever, constituted a principal decorative motif in antiquity,
and it was seldom, if ever, set on an angle, forced to stand on a single corner.

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 3 3