Page 42 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

the nine tripods that as late as the T'ang Dynasty the "empress"
Wu caused a set to be cast in order to bolster up her dubious claim
to the throne.
Long before any archaeological evidence of the Shang Dynasty
had been unearthed, the ritual bronzes bore witness to the power
and vitality of this remote epoch in Chinese history. Bronze ves-
sels have been treasured by Chinese connoisseurs for centuries:
that great collector and savant, the Sung emperor Hui-tsung
2 1 Yt-hsing. enclosing in ideograph for
(i ioi-i 125), is even said to have sent agents to the Anyang region
offering wine.
to search out specimens for his collection. These vessels, which, as
Hansford aptly observed, formed a kind of "communion plate,"
were made for the offerings of food and wine to ancestral spirits
that formed the core of the sacrificial rites performed by the ruler
and the aristocracy. Some of them bear very short inscriptions,
generally consisting of two or three characters forming a clan
name. Often this inscription is enclosed within a square device
known as the ya-hsing, from its resemblance to the character ya. A
number of theories as to its meaning have been advanced. The re-
cent discovery at Anyang of bronze seals leaving an impression of
precisely this shape suggests that it was in some way connected
with the clan name.
Chemical analysis shows that the bronze vessels were com-
posed of 5-30 percent tin, 2-3 percent lead, the rest (apart from
impurities) being copper. In course of time many of them have ac-
quired a beautiful patina, much valued by connoisseurs, which
ranges from malachite green and kingfisher blue to yellow or even
red, according to the composition of the metal and the conditions
under which the vessel was buried. Forgers have gone to enor-
mous trouble to imitate these effects, and a case is recorded of one
family of which each generation buried fakes in specially treated
22 Sectional clay moulds for bronze- soil, to be dug up and sold by the next generation but one. It was
casting. After Stub. Ch'ang-ju and
Kwang-chih Chang. long thought that the Shang and Chou bronzes were made by the

2) Ritual vessel, fang (square) ting.
Bronte. From the tomb of Fu Hao,
Anyang. Shang Dynasty.
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material