Page 146 - Christies Asia Week 2015 Chinese Works of Art

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION
2103
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, YOU
WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH-10TH CENTURY BC

The pear-shaped vessel is raised on a spreading foot
encircled by a bow-string band, and is cast in high relief
with an animal mask on either side of the neck between
narrow bow-string borders that are interrupted by a pair
of animal head-surmounted loops to which are attached
the arched handle. The domed cover has a deep collar
and similar animal masks between bow-string borders
below the fared, cylindrical fnial, and is fanked by two
upright ‘beaks’. A six-character inscription is cast in the
bottom of the vessel and inside the cover. The bronze
has a mottled green patina and some encrustation.
9√ in. (25 cm.) high

$120,000-180,000

PROVENANCE:

Bluett & Sons, London, 1963.
Georges Halphen Collection; Christie’s Paris, 20
November 2003, lot 438.

LITERATURE:

Bluett & Sons, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, London, 1963,
no. 1.
C. Deydier, Les Bronzes Chinois, Fribourg, 1980, no. 38.

The six-character inscription may be read, ‘Chenchen
of the Chen branch of the Yi family who worked as an
historiographer [made for] Father Gui.’ For a discusson on
Chenchen bronzes see Wang Jinfeg, ‘On the “Chenchen”
Historiographer Family in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties:
from the Inscriptions of the Bronzes,’ Kaogu, 2013:11, pp.
62-71.

This simply decorated bronze you is very similar to the Huan
you illustrated by Jessica Rawson in Western Zhou Ritual
Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. IIB,
The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1990, p. 517, fg. 72.3.
Lengthy inscriptions cast on the interior of the Huan you
help to date it to the second half of early Western Zhou.
The author notes, p. 517, that you with covers fanked by
‘beaks’ remained popular into the middle Western Zhou, and
that many of them are decorated with birds, unlike the very
simple decoration of the present and the Huan you. Also, the
bodies of these later you are shorter in proportion to their
width than those dated to the second half of early Western
Zhou.

西周 青銅「臣辰佚冊父癸」卣

(inscription)

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