Page 64 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

CHANGES IN Already in the seventh century a change was beginning to become
BRONZE STYLE apparent in the bronze style. The huge extravagance of the middle
Chou decor seems to have exhausted itself. Ungainly excrescences
are shorn off, and the surface is smoothed away to produce an un-
broken, almost severe silhouette. The decoration becomes even
more strictly confined and is often sunk below the surface, or in-
laid in gold or silver. Hints of archaism appear in the emphasis
upon the ting tripod and in the discreet application of t'ao-t'ieh
masks, which now make their reappearance as the clasps for ring-
handles. But this stylistic revolution was not accomplished all at
once. In vessels unearthed in 1923 far to the north at Li-yii in
Shansi, but now known to have been cast at Hou-ma in the south-
west corner of the province, capital of the state of Chin from 584
10450 B.C., the pattern of flat interlocking bands of dragons looks
forward to the intricate decoration of the mature late Warring
$3 Ritual vessel, ting, with rcvetsible States style; but in their robust forms, in the tiger masks that top
cover. "Li-yu style." Bronze. Early
their legs and the realistic birds and other creatures that adorn their
Eastern Chou period, sixth to fifth
century B.C. lids, these vessels recall the vigour of an earlier age.
This dccrcsccndo from the coarse vigour of the middle Chou
style continues in the later bronzes from Hsin-chcng and in the
new style associated with Chin-ts'un and Hou-ma. The typical
broad, three-legged ting from these northern sites, of which the
best known is Li-yii, for example, is decorated with bands of in-
terlocked dragons separated by plaitlike fillets. There is a tendency
to imitate other materials such as a leather water flask, the strap-
work and texture of the animal's pelt being clearly suggested by
what Karlgren called "teeming hooks," which may be seen filling
the background on the top of the bell illustrated on p. 46. But on
the most beautiful of these flasks, such as the pien-hu ("flat vessel")