Page 38 - Sothebys Fine Chinese Art London, November 2018

Fig. 7 Fig. 8
Bronze dish with double rings Bronze tripod pan with two-ringed
Xiqing sijian. Volume 15 © Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing
圖七 圖八
漢魚藻盤，《 西清四鑒 》，卷十五 戰國三足雙環青銅盤， 北京故宮博物院

If the form of these jade washers with beast-head handles rings in the mouths, including the famous Guoji Zibai pan,
and rings originated in bronze pan dishes, why do we refer to which has eight handles and rings. Mentioned above, the
them as washers and not pan? bronze pan with four rings featuring aquatic scenes that the
Qianlong Emperor thought to date from the Han dynasty is
Let us first consider pan dishes. They originated in the Shang,
now believed to date from the Warring States period instead.
Spring and Autumn, and Warring States periods as water vessels.
It is understandable that, without the knowledge of pre-Qin
During the Shang and Zhou periods, a hand-washing ritual
artefacts furnished by modern archaeology, the Emperor often
known as woguan was performed before and after banquets,
mistakenly attributed antiques to the Han dynasty.
as recorded in the Book of Rites . In this ritual, water would be
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poured on someone’s hands by another person from the top. During the pre-Qin period, only pan existed and not washers.
Pan dating from the late Western Zhou through the Spring and After the Warring States period, the woguan washing ritual
Autumn and Warring States periods tend to be excavated with became defunct, and pan gradually came to be replaced by washers.
yi ewers placed inside them. This indicates that pan were used to However, during the Han dynasty, xi remained a verb (‘to wash’)
collect and contain water, and yi were used to pour it. and did not refer to a vessel type, as evidenced by the corresponding
entry in the Han dynasty dictionary Shuowen jiezi (‘Explaining
The pan dish is characterised by a large and flat opening,
graphs and analysing characters’): “The character xi refers to the
a shallow and flat body, a circular base that enables stable
washing of feet.” In other words, the original meaning of xi is the
placement, and two handles that facilitate lifting. Pan from
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action of washing one’s feet . Only later did the word gradually
the pre-Qin era came with various kinds of handles, but
come to be used as a noun referring to a vessel type.
generally featured fixed handles on opposite sides. From the
Western Zhou through the Warring States periods, pan began The oldest known and extant jade washer is a spinach-green washer.
to feature one, two, or four loose ring-shaped handles. In the It was excavated from the mausoleum of Shi Sheng in Quzhou,
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Palace Museum is a three-footed, two-ringed bronze pan from Zhejiang, dating from the Southern Song dynasty . The washer
the Warring States period and formerly in the Qing imperial ingeniously takes the natural form of a lotus leaf, with its curled
collection (fig. 8). Pan also came with beast-head handles with stem serving as the handle, and anticipated Ming- and Qing-

36 SOTHEBY’S