Page 81 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

Two oddly shaped vessels (cats. 28, 24) are
anomalous both as vessels and as animals. Neither
accurately represents a real animal or can be linked
to a specific shape in the standard vessel repertoire.
The silhouette of catalogue 28 suggests a snake or a
crocodile; in fact, both snakes and crocodiles appear
as decorative motifs on its surface. It is likely that
the creators of this vessel, excavated in the brackish
semidesert region of northern Shared Province, in
the middle reaches of the Yellow River basin, were
actually familiar with these creatures. ' 2 The bird-
shaped vessel (cat. 24) is one of a pair recovered
from the late thirteenth-century bce tomb of the
Shang royal consort Fu Hao at Anyang, Henan
Province.' 3 It is not based on any recognizable bird,
although its large hooked beak suggests that of a
parrot. The ambiguity of its shape carries over onto
its decoration, where visual puns and double
meanings tease the eye and the imagination. Two
dragons diving onto the bird's forehead double as
horns; the large spirals of its wings are also coiled
serpents; an owl, with distinctive eyes and beak,
appears as part of the tail feathers. The small three-
dimensional figures of a bird and dragon, which
also serve as handles for the lid on the back of its
head, seem to peer playfully between the horns.
Bronze casting expanded greatly in geographical
range, in productivity, and in creativity during the
last centuries of the second millennium bce, as
demonstrated both by the artifacts themselves and
by their archaeological locations. The magnificent
four-ram zun (cat. 23) and the bronze boar (cat. 27)
were found south of theYangzi River in Hunan
Province; so were the elephant-shaped vessel (cat.
25) and the bail-handled covered container (you;
cat. 26). u The large basin (cat. 29) came from the
lower Yangzi River basin in southeastern China, the
serpentine vessel (cat. 28) from a site just south of
the Great Wall in northwestern China. In the
quality of their workmanship some of these vessels
are virtually indistinguishable from the best
products of the capital region of Anyang. Some, like
the elephant or the you, may have come from the
area of Anyang; others may have been made by
regional workshops according to local tastes or
ritual needs (cats. 27-29).
Other artifacts from theYangzi River valley, like the
drum (gu; cat. 34) which was a chance find in
Chongyang county, Hubei Province, further attest
to locally distinctive bronze-casting traditions in the Shaanxi provinces, established the Zhou dynasty,
peripheral regions. It is one of only two bronze
drums known, both distinctly southern in style.
Bronze drums may have played a special part in the
Norites and rituals of the south. 1 ' bronze drums
have yet been recovered along the Yellow River
basin, although drums made from humbler
materials such as earthenware and wood were in
use there. '"The loose design of spirals on the
INNOVATION IN ANCIENT CHINESE METAIWORK
present drum suggests a relatively early date of
manufacture (ca. 1500-1300 bce); if correct, this
means that local bronze-casting workshops were in
operation in the south at about the same time as
their northern counterparts in the Shang heartland
along the Yellow River basin.
Dramatic evidence of the geographical extent of
southern bronze casting and the skills of the casters
has been afforded by recent discovery of two
sacrificial pits, containing bronzes dated to the late
second millennium bce, at Sanxingdui, Guanghan
county, Sichuan Province in southwestern China.' 7
The Sanxingdui pits and Fu Hao's tomb at Anyang
are closely contemporary but about eight hundred
miles apart, and the bronzes from the two sites
differ strikingly in type, form, and size (fig. 3). The
impressive bronze mask (cat. 30), the largest of three
recovered at Guanghan, has no parallel elsewhere in
China. Its function and context of use are unclear,
its form and size unprecedented, and the meaning
of its extraordinary projecting pupils is a mystery.
That they had special meaning for the society that
created them is evident from the extra effort
required to produce them. Projecting a startling
distance from the face, the pupils appear to have
been precast, then inserted into the mold for the
rest of the face, which was cast around them in a
second pour of metal. In the use of precast
elements, as well as in its monumental size, this
casting is reminiscent of similarly ambitious
products of northern workshops, such as the large
fang ding (cat. 22) discussed above. The rectangular
slot at the center of the forehead may have held an
extension, perhaps resembling the long scrolled
projection fitted on one of the other two masks.' 8
Clearly the people who commissioned the bizarre
bronzes at Guanghan and buried them together
with a rich assortment of bronze, jade, and ivory
objects in two large pits (not tombs) were masters
of a bronze-casting technology closely comparable
to that of their counterparts farther north in the
Yellow River basin. Although the bronze casters of
the lower Yellow River basin may have been the
first to explore, develop, and eventually achieve
high standards in bronze casting, it was the distant
workshops that seem to have tested the limits of
the technology by attempting eccentric shapes,
unorthodox decoration, and gigantic castings.
WESTERN ZHOU PERIOD
It was precisely one of these distant centers ot
power, one located in the middle and upper Yellov
River basin, that eventually overcame the Shang
kings at Anyang about 1 100 bce. The conquerors,
whose homeland spanned present-da) Gansu and
locating its capital in the easternmost pari of their
realm, near present-day Xi'an."' Not only did the
Zhou adopt Shang rituals and customs and
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