Page 39 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

datable sites. One of the closest such pieces is a hexagonal hu vessel 13
(with flat ear-like handles rather than cylindrical appendages) excavated
from a Yuan-dynasty site in Inner Mongolia; excepting the attachments at
the neck, the shape is almost identical to that of the Clague vase, its
vertical faceting also accentuated by ridges at the corners. The excavated
vase also has bands that divide its surface into five thematically unrelated
horizontal registers. Although the decoration is not identical on the two
vases, a related pattern of rising lappets appears in the uppermost register
of each; in addition, the excavated vase has in its second register diamond-
shaped lozenges, each with a tiny stylized flower head at its center, that
are akin to those with swastikas at their center in the third register of the
Clague vase. (Obviously from the same family of bronzes as the small hu
excavated in Inner Mongolia, a hexagonal vase 14 in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, also shares the same characteristics with the Clague vase,
including a similar band of rising lappets at the top.) A second excavated
piece - recovered from the same Yuan-dynasty site in Inner Mongolia as the
previous hexagonal vase - is an elongated square hu vessel 15 (also with flat
ear-like handles instead of cylindrical appendages); like the Clague vessel,
it too has small ridges that set off the corners and narrow bands that section
its surface into five horizontal registers. Though the decorative schemes
of the two pieces are not identical, they are closely related in their reliance
on small repeating design elements and in their placement of square
elements on a diagonal so that they rest on their corners. At least two
additional, though somewhat more distantly related, bronze pieces 16 were
recovered from the remains of the Chinese merchant ship that sank off
the coast of Sinan, Republic of Korea, in 1323 (and are thus datable to the
17
early fourteenth century). One of the two hu vessels from the Sinan ship
find - with a flattened circular section and tubular appendages - has its
decorative scheme divided into five registers, the wave-and-whitecap
motif of the second register repeated on the foot, as the motif from the
second register of the Clague vessel repeats on its foot. The taller foot
and carefully centered decorative motifs in registers three and four of the
Sinan vase distinguish it from the Clague piece, perhaps suggesting a
different place of manufacture. This body of evidence amply confirms the
Song to Yuan date of the Clague vase.

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