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PROPERTY FROM A JAPANESE FAMILY COLLECTION This vessel belongs to a distinct and rare group of archaic
bronze ritual vessels that feature striking intaglio and
A RARE ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE openwork decoration. Several gu of this type were excavated
VESSEL (GU) at the tomb of Fu Hao in Anyang, Henan province, illustrated in
LATE SHANG DYNASTY Yinxu Fu Hao mu, Beijing, 1980, pls 74 and 75; and another was
excavated at Xiaotun, a small village near Anyang, published in
of slender waisted form, nely cast around the mid-section 5000 Ans d’Art Chinois. Les Bronzes, Brussels, 1989, vol. I,
with pairs of taotie masks with raised eyes divided by notched pl. 41. These excavated examples con rm the dating of this
piece to the rst century of the Anyang period, and their
anges, above a pair of bowstrings interrupted by two importance in the context of burial ceremonies.
apertures, the splayed foot similarly decorated in an openwork
design, the tall ared neck encircled by four upright triangular See a closely related gu of this type, bearing the same
blades rising from a band of spirals, the surface with areas of inscription, from the Carl Kempe Collection, illustrated in
malachite encrustation, the exterior with a pictogram below Wu Zhenfeng, ed., Shangzhou qingtongqi mingwen ji tuxiang
the rim, possibly reading que, Japanese wood box (2) jicheng [Compendium of Inscriptions and Images of Bronzes
Height 10⅜ in., 26.4 cm from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties], Shanghai, 2012, vol. 17,
no. 9116; and two others, with the same inscription, from the
PROVENANCE collection of V.W. Shiro, sold in our London rooms, 13th-14th
Sotheby’s London, 8th July 1975, lot 8. November 1972, lots 234 and 235; the rst, which was
Hirano Kotoken, 1976. previously sold in the same rooms, 28th May 1963, lot 139, is
now in the Idemitsu Museum, Tokyo and published in Ancient
EXHIBITED Chinese Arts in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1989, pl. 50, as
Kyoto National Museum, from 1970s until 2016 (on loan). well as in Wang Tao and Liu Yu, A Selection of Early Chinese
Bronzes with Inscriptions from Sotheby’s and Christie’s Sales,
LITERATURE Shanghai, 2007, no. 200.
Minao Hayashi, In Shu Jidai Seidouki no Kenkyu In-Shu
Seidouki Soran 1 [Studies on Shang and Zhou Period Bronzes], Several other gu of this type are held in important collections
Tokyo, 1984, vol 1, p. 323, g. 79. around the world, for example one in the Shanghai Museum,
Shanghai, is illustrated in Ma Chengyuan, Ancient Chinese
$ 80,000-120,000 Bronzes, Oxford, 1986, pl. 28; another is published in Robert
W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler
㫬 Collections, Cambridge, 1987, pl. 30; one from the Royal
Ontario Museum, Toronto, is illustrated in Christian Deydier,
㫬 Les Bronzes Archaïques Chinois, Paris, 1995, vol. I, p. 227, pl. 1;
a fourth in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in William
1976 Watson, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, London, 1962, pl. 22b; and a
further example was sold in our London rooms, 8th July 1975,
1970 2016 lot 8.

Ⱥ Ⱥ Vessels cast in openwork are known from as early as the
Erligang period, with a number of gu and zun excavated at
1984 323 79 Panlongcheng, Hubei province, such as one published in
Zhongguo meishu fenlei quanji. Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji,
Beijing, 1996, vol. 1, pl. 155.

122 SOTHEBY’S