Page 30 - March 17 2017 Chinese Art NYC, Christies

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

1016
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL AND COVER, YOU

EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 11TH-10TH CENTURY BC
The bulbous body is cast on two sides with a small ram’s-head boss on a decorative band cast with
stylized taotie on a leiwen ground, and the loose over-head handle terminates at either side with an animal-
head. The cover is cast with a saw-tooth pattern encircling the sides, and the top with a similar band of
stylized taotie on leiwen beneath the plain fnial of ovoid section.
8 in. (20.3 cm.) high, wood box
$50,000-70,000

PROVENANCE

F. D. Heastand, San Francisco, before 1956.
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 8-9 March 1956, lot 254.

EXHIBITED

Vatican City, Vatican Museums, 1956-2016.
Compare the you in the British Museum with similar cast decoration, but lacking the saw-tooth pattern
encircling the sides of the cover, illustrated by Jessica Rawson in Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the
Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. IIB, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1990, p. 517, fg. 72.4, where
it is dated to the second half of the early Western Zhou dynasty. The author notes, p. 517, that you with
covers fanked by ‘beaks’ remained popular into the middle Western Zhou, and that many of them are
decorated with birds.
西周早期 青銅鳳鳥紋卣

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