Page 83 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

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The increase in sets of vessels with long inscriptions
associating them to certain noble families or clans is
symptomatic of a political development during the
ninth and eighth centuries bce: the declining power
of the Zhou kings and the increasing autonomy of
the nobles in their respective domains surrounding
the Zhou court. To appear appropriately equipped
with the trappings of authority, ambitious dukes
and princes began commissioning sets of bronze
vessels to display as symbols of power at important
rituals and state occasions. The spouted pitcher (he;
cat. 38) and the food container (gui; cat. 39)
unearthed at the city of Pingdingshan, central
Henan Province, signify this new demand. 29 Both
vessels carry inscriptions linking them with the
small state of Ying, which fell to rivals sometime in
the fifth century BCE. The wealth of bronzes
associated with the Ying state at this site has been
matched by the rich finds associated with various
other principalities, attesting to an overall sharp rise possibilities were virtually unlimited.
in demand. The bronze-casting industry had to
improve production methods, not simply to make
duplicate vessels but also to increase output as
required by its expanding clientele. 30
EASTERN ZHOU PERIOD
In 770 bce the Zhou kings lost their western
capital at Xi'an to marauding nomads and fled to
their eastern capital near present-day Luoyang,
Henan Province. Their shrunken power accelerated
the fracturing of the realm into powerful
aristocratic states, with concomitant explosive rise
in the demand on the bronze industry. This political
decentralization must have been responsible in part
for the radical changes that took place in workshop
organization and production methods of the
bronze-casting industry by the seventh and sixth
Acenturies bce. large sixth-fifth-century bronze
foundry site, under excavation at the city of
Houma, southern Shanxi Province, since the 1950s,
has yielded workshop debris that hints at
techniques capable of meeting all requirements
sets of ritual vessels matching in shape and/or
decoration, vastly increased scale of production,
—foreign exotica, and everyday needs without
sacrificing the high-level workmanship that court
and noble patrons had come to expect. 31
Foundry debris at Houma suggested a production
process organized according to specialization and
division of labor. The multistep processes of
shaping, decorating, and assembling the clay molds,
as well as the manufacture of different types of
bronzes (both ritual and utilitarian), probably took
place in separate areas of the workshop compound,
with different groups of workers contributing
specific skills toward the final product. Most
compelling of all the finds at Houma were the
thousands ot pieces of decorated clay foundry
debris, suggesting the wavs in which surface
INNOVATION IN ANCIENT CHINESE METALWORK
Fig. 4. Clay model of decorative design for casting. Late
6th—early 5th century BCE. Niucun, Houma, Shanxi
Province.
decoration and appendages such as handles, lids, and
other decorative accents were made. It seems that
some kind of master pattern system was used, so
that the same decor units could be variously
combined into vessels of diverse shapes, sizes, and
Adesigns. complex multistep decor replication
process required taking repeated clay negatives from
a single positive model, which served as a master
unit (fig. 4). This process made possible identical
repeated patterns on a vessel (fig. 4), or identical
handles, legs, or decorative appendages on a single
vessel. For sets of bronzes in graduated sizes, a series
of similarly graduated master units could produce
appropriately sized but otherwise identical handles
or accents (fig. 5). 32 With a wide variety of master
patterns at the workshop's disposal, the decor
The four-sided vessel (Jang hu; cat. 43) was likely a
product of the Houma workshops. It forms a set
with three other identical vessels, recovered from
the rich tomb of a noble of the Jin state at [insheng
village, outside Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi
Province (see also cat. 44). 33 As a measure of the
bronze caster's facility in replicating vessel shapes
and decoration in a variety of sizes and designs, the
tomb that yielded these four hn also contained
matching sets, but in graduated sizes, of seven and
six tripod vessels (ding); a set of eight matching
stemmed and covered food containers (don); four
basins (jian); and two sets of bells (bo), five in one
set and fourteen in the other (fig. 6). Detailed
studies of a hn in the Freer Gallery oi Art.
Smithsonian Institution, demonstrated that the
continuously interlacing dragon and twisted-rope
designs on such vessels were actually replicated
from just four or five master pattern units, each
repeated as necessary to compose .1 given register of
decoration (tig. 7)." Similarly repeated pattern units
form the designs on the interior and exterior ol the
rectangular basin (pan; cat. 4SI. The first-rate
workmanship possible on bronzes decorated by
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