Page 82 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts
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bovine horns on the lid; coiled serpents on the
shoulders; beasts with large coiled bodies below; and
realistic recumbent buffalo on the foot; all rendered
in varying relief against a fine spiral ground.
Similar features can also be seen within the Zhou
realm, on bronzes excavated near Baoji county,
Shaanxi Province, datable to the first hundred or
more years of Zhou rule (ca. noo-ca. 950 bce).
Comparable energy and power are exuded by the
massive hooked flanges and bold taotie with
outward-spiralmg horns on the vessel tor liquids
(zun; cat. 32)," the intimidating bovine horns on
the base of the food container (gui; cat. 2 -1 and
35),
the exuberant arrays of real and imaginary creatures
on both the gui and the rectangular gong (cat. 24
36).
Zhou bronze casters exploited the hooked flanges
on the zun (cat. 32) for maximum effect by
—deliberately extending them beyond the rim the
overhangs were separately cast and attached to the
existing flanges by additional pours of metal. The
massiveness of this vessel is not purely visual:
unusually heavy for a vessel of its size, it weighs
14.78 kilograms. The same complexity of
manufacture characterizes the above-mentioned gui
and gong: on the gui, intricate mold assembly for the
projecting bovine horns, precast, multianimal
handles, and a small bell attached to the underside
of its base; on the gong, the three-dimensional,
down-curving horns of the creature that forms the
lid. The new aesthetic requirements of early Zhou
patrons continued to push bronze casters to the
limits of their skills, and with surpassing results.
Fig-3- Bronze standing figure. Late second millennium Besides introducing new aesthetics and motifs, the
BCE. Sanxingdui, Guanghan, Sichuan Province.
Zhou conquest also appears to have brought a
continue to require the bronze casters' services,
change in ritual practices that presented a different
their patronage infused new life into a tradition by
then over five hundred years old. The Zhou set ot problems to the Zhou bronze caster. 2' The
brought with them a liberating flamboyance most
gong (cat. 36), dating from the early tenth century
certainly influenced by the eccentric creations from
the south, southwest, and southeast. 20 Vessels in this bce, formed a set with two other vessels, each
exhibition dating from the early part of Zhou rule different in shape but identical in design and
(ca. 1100—ca. 1000 bce) illustrate some of these
distinctive Zhou features (cats. 31, 32, 35, 41). bearing the same forty-character inscription
The container for liquids (lei; cat. 31), found far The2 rectangular container (fang yi; cat. 41)
from the Zhou realm in a cache in Zhuwajie, Peng
county, Sichuan Province, is an outstanding example inside. ''
of Zhou's invigorating effect on bronze design. 21
Vessels of equally imposing size were made by the from the late tenth century BCE is also part of a set
Shang casters, but the bold elephant-trunk handles
and the ferociously hooked flanges running from lid of three vessels different in shape but identical in
to foot create a bristling silhouette that is assertively surface decoration and inscription. 27 Zhou nobles,
difierent from the monumental lei vessels of the prompted perhaps by religious customs or ritual
Shang. Its surface decoration augments this effect
with a host of new motifs: taotie (semiabstract requirements at court, seem to have been the first
zoomorphic motifs) with almost freestanding
group to require sets of vessels with matching
designs, shapes, or dedicatory inscriptions. By the
early ninth century bce, when the large container
tor liquid (hu; cat. 39) and its mate were made, large
sets of bronze vessels, often carrying matching
dedicatory inscriptions and comprising a narrow
range of shapes and designs, had become the
norm. 2S This development, which required that the
bronze caster produce virtual duplicates (often in
decoration and sometimes in shape), presented new
demands on an industry that, up to then, had only
been making one-of-a-kind bronzes.
INNOVATION IN ANCIENT CHINESE METALWORK
