Page 286 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

body of the vessel by digging sockets into the ap-
pendages, which were fitted over tongues protrud-
ing from the vessel. Analysis of the solder used to fix
the four monsters to the foot of the zun has estab-
lished that it contained 53 percent tin, 41 percent
lead, and 2 percent copper. 4
While many of the individual elements were
probably cast using the traditional ceramic section-
mold technique, the bands of openwork at the
mouth of the zun and pan represented a much
sterner challenge. This discontinuous "surface" of
this multilayered openwork is formed of individual
C- and S-curls, each supported by one or more
stalks rising from a mesh below. The intricacy of
this openwork would most certainly have required
the use of a fusible model such as wax. The lost-wax
method of casting had been used in China's border
regions as early as the Shang period, but it began
to be exploited for vessel ornaments only in the
S
seventh century BCE. The technique was most ad-
vanced in the Chu state, as demonstrated by a mid-
sixth-century BCE vessel stand (/in) that makes
6
extensive use of the technique. The delicacy of the
filigree work on the zun-pan f however, far surpasses
that on the jin and represents the apogee of lost-
wax casting as an ornamental technique.
While the vessel would undoubtedly have been
valued for its technical virtuosity, it is likely that the
ornamentation held symbolic meanings as well. The
clambering amphibian figures with bifurcated tails
that clench the rim of the pan in their jaws seem to
derive from the serpent-devouring-frog motif com-
mon on bronzes south of the Yangzi River; such
As a tour de force of multiple casting, this piece figures occur intermittently in Chu woodcarving as
7
stands unrivaled by any metalwork from the ancient well. Although the creatures cannot be identified
world: the vessels themselves were cast using the with any zoological or iconographic certainty, they
traditional ceramic section-mold technique, modi- can be read as three-dimensional counterparts of
fied to exploit the more recently invented pattern- the creatures painted on the sides of Marquis Yi's
3
block technology. Individually cast components coffin; these undoubtedly fulfilled a religious role. 8
were then soldered to the vessels and to each other The vessel is one of a small number of bronzes
using a tin-lead solder — fifty-six soldering points from the tomb that were apparently not made for
have been identified on the zun and forty-four on Marquis Yi himself. Beneath the inscription in the
the pan. The heads, tongues, and bodies of the zun pan that identifies the object as commissioned by
handle figures, for example, were all cast separately, the marquis, an earlier, partly erased inscription
then soldered together. They were attached to the names a different Zeng figure — Marquis Yu —

285 Z E N C H O U Y I TOM B A T L E I C U D U N