Page 53 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

NOWN AS JUE, THREE-LEGGED, SPOUTED VESSELS of this type
were used as ritual wine vessels during the Shang dynasty, large
Kones for warming the wine over a fire and small ones perhaps as
cups for drinking the heated wine. Like its Shang dynasty prototypes, this jue
stands on three slender, pointed legs, each triangular in section, that curve
outward near their points. The walls of the cylindrical, round-bottomed
container rise almost straight up, and then flare dramatically to form the
flattened, horizontally oriented spout arrangement at the top. Two small
posts with finials in the form of covered urns rise from the lip, midway
between the spout and its similarly shaped counterweight at the back.
Resembling a rolled metal edge, a cast lip encircles the vessel's mouth,
dipping slightly under the posts and thus underscoring the division between
spout and counterweight. Decoration is limited to a single band about the
cylindrical waist that features two pairs of long-tailed birds, one on either
side, set in relief against a ground of squared leiwen; each pair of con-
fronting birds is shown in flight with wings extended and legs retracted.
Three intaglio inscriptions, each bordered by a single sunken line, appear
on the otherwise undecorated upper portion of the vessel, one under
each post and one at the back, opposite the spout.
Although this vessel clearly derives from Shang-dynasty jue, 1 its
shape and decoration set it apart from its Bronze Age models. A Shang-
dynasty jue (of the Anyang phase) virtually always has sturdy legs, for
example, and its flaring upper portion is usually so well proportioned to
its supporting cylindrical container that, despite its unusual, somewhat
asymmetrical form, the vessel appears balanced and stable. In addition, a
classical Shang jue typically has a vertically oriented strap handle at a
quarter turn from the spout, and its capped posts - probably used to lift
the vessel and its heated contents from the fire - tend to rise from the
base of the spout rather than from the midpoint of the lip. Characteristically
very short, inscriptions on Bronze Age jue usually appear inconspicuously
under the handle, never boldly positioned on the vessel's exterior.
For balance, a classical Shang-dynasty jue almost always has a trian-
gular, winglike projection opposite its spout rather than the rounded form
seen on the present vessel. The rounded counterweight suggests that the
Clague vessel incorporates elements from both the classical jue and its close
relative, the symmetrical jiao, 2 a rare vessel type that has two matching
triangular spouts, similar in shape to the winglike projection that balances
the single spout of the standard jue. The bronze casters combined the
symmetry of the jiao with the spout shape of the jue in the Clague piece.

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 4 9