Page 17 - Christies IMportant Chinese Art Sept 26 2020 NYC

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE ASIAN COLLECTION
1505
A BRONZE RITUAL FOOD VESSEL, GUI
EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH-10TH CENTURY BC
The body is cast below the rim with a narrow band of dragons centered The gui is one of the classic vessel shapes that was inherited from
on either side by an animal mask in relief and interrupted by handles the Shang dynasty. Like the ding they were meant to hold food during
that issue from animal heads and are cast on the sides with intaglio rituals.
scrolls above the pendent, hooked tabs. The foot is encircled by a
similar dragon band centered on each side by a small flange. The present gui has the characteristic S-shaped profile. The
10Ω in. (26.6 cm.) across handles arrangement of the decoration, i.e. the use of a decorative band below
the rim and another encircling the foot while the belly of the bowl
remains undecorated, is a type that is seen during the early Western
$30,000-50,000
Zhou period. Two gui of early Western Zhou date illustrated by Jessica
Rawson in Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler
PROVENANCE:
Acquired in Hong Kong, 1992. Collections, vol. IIB, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, Washington,
D.C., 1990, pp. 410-15, nos. 50 and 51, are also of this type, and have
bands of similar dragons below the rim and encircling the similar type
西周早期 青銅獸首雙耳簋
of foot, but rather than being reserved on a leiwen ground as on the
present vessel, the dragons on the Sackler gui are on an undecorated
ground.

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