Page 186 - Chinese Works of Art Chritie's Mar. 22-23 2018

VARIOUS PROPERTIES
907
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU
LATE SHANG-EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY
The pear-shaped body is raised on a splayed foot cast with two bow-string bands, and is decorated on
each side with a large taotie mask below a band of kui dragons centered by an animal mask cast in high
relief, and interrupted by a loop at each end attached to the rings at the end of the rope-twist handle. The
sides and the top of the cover are decorated with bands of confronting kui dragons beneath a segmented
fnial. Both the interior of the vessel and the cover are cast with a four-character inscription, xiang ning
fu xin. The surface has a mottled brownish-red patina and some malachite and cuprite encrustation.
7æ in. (19.4 cm.) high

$80,000-100,000

PROVENANCE
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 20 March 1976, lot 25.
J. T. Tai & Co., New York.
LITERATURE
Wu Zhenfeng, ed. Shang Zhou qing tong qi ming wen ji tu xiang ji cheng (Corpus of Inscriptions and Images
of Bronzes from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties), 2012, vol. 23, no. 12960.
The inscription consists of two characters xiang ning (a clan sign), followed by fu xin (Father Xin). The
two-character clan sign, xiang ning, consists of an altar positioned below two fgures kneeling before a
vessel. It is believed to be the pictographic version of the character for banquet in Chinese. A similar
clan sign can be found on a late Shang jue in the Shanghai Museum illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi
quanji - 3 - Shang (3), Beijing, 1997, p. 26, no. 26.
Compare the similar you illustrated by M. Sullivan in Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes and Jades in the
Collection of Sir Alan and Lady Barlow, London, 1963, no. B8, pl. 151.
商晚期/西周早期 青銅鄉寧父辛卣

(inscription inside vessel) (inscription inside cover)

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