Page 22 - March 17 2017 Chinese Art NYC, Christies

VARIOUS PROPERTIES

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A RARE BRONZE RITUAL TRIPOD WINE VESSEL, MU NING RI XIN JIAO

LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 11TH CENTURY BC
The body is raised on three tall, curved blade-form legs and cast in relief with two taotie masks, one divided
by the loop handle and the other divided by a narrow vertical fange, all beneath a band of upright blades at
the fared mouth. An inscription is cast on an interior wall, and the surface has a greenish patina and some
malachite encrustation overall.
6¬ in. (16.7 cm.) high, wood stand, Japanese wood box

$80,000-120,000

PROVENANCE

Sotheby’s London, 10 June 1986, lot 50 (part).
Christie’s New York, 22 March 2012, lot 1515.

LITERATURE

Wang Tao and Liu Yu, ed., A Selection of Early Chinese Bronzes with Inscriptions from Sotheby’s and
Christie’s Sales, 2007, no. 297 (inscription only).
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. 17, p. 190, no. 08753 (inscription only).
The inscription, mu ning ri xin, can be translated as “(made for) mother Ri Xin from the Ning clan”. The
character ri means day, which refers to the ten tiangan (Celestial Stems) naming system in the Shang
dynasty. The Shang people assigned one of the ten Celestial Stems that corresponds to one day in a
ten-day week to their deceased ancestors. In the present case, the celestial stem Xin was assigned to
the female ancestor from the Ning clan for whom this ritual vessel was commissioned.
An almost identical jiao vessel bearing the same inscription is in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo,
illustrated in Ancient Chinese Arts in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1989, no. 36. This same inscription
can also be found on six other bronzes in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, including a gui, a gu, a you,
a fangyi, a fangzun and a zun, illustrated ibid., nos. 17, 58, 67, 76, 43, and 44, respectively. Taking into
account the jiao sold at Sotheby’s London, 10 June 1986, lot 50 (right) as the companion to the present
jiao, we have located nine ritual bronzes belonging to mother Ri Xin from the Ning clan.
The sumptuousness of the Mu Ning Ri Xin bronzes group, featuring rare and prized vessel types such
as fangyi, fangzun, and jiao, may indicate a high status of the owner. A set of ten jiao, of very similar
form and decoration, bearing Ya Zhi clan signs, was found in Guojiazhuang M160 at Anyang City, and
is illustrated in Yue Hongbin, ed., Ritual Bronzes Recently Excavated in Yinxu, Kunming, 2008, no. 119.
Compare, also, a similar jiao formerly in the Qing imperial collection and now in the Palace Museum,
Beijing illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasure of the Palace Museum -27- Bronze Ritual
Vessels and Musical Instruments, Hong Kong, 2006, p. 107, no. 68. Based on the overall style of the Mu
Ning Ri Xin group, the present jiao can be dated to the very end of the Yinxu period.
商晚期 母嬣日辛角

(inscription)

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