Page 116 - 2020 Sept Important Chinese Art Sotheby's NYC Asia Week

9/2/2020 Important Chinese Art | Sotheby's

Glass was still hardly in use at the time, known mainly in form of imported beads, and undoubtedly an extravagant choice for
embellishing a bronze. Glass beads with ‘eye’ motifs in contrasting colors had been made particularly in Egypt but also in many
other Central, Middle, Near Eastern and Western countries from the mid-second millennium BC onwards and were universally
popular as talismans. At least since the Warring States period, some of these foreign beads had found their way into China, and it
did not take long before they were reproduced locally. At first, they were perhaps copied in form of pottery beads with inlaid glass
‘eyes’, but soon as pure glass ‘eye beads’.[1] Visually, Chinese glass beads are difficult to distinguish from those made abroad, but
since they differ in composition, chemical tests have confirmed that both existed side by side in the Warring States period.

The present bronze with its application of gold and silver and its lavish use of ‘eye’-decorated glass plaques is therefore not only of
major importance for the history of Chinese bronzes and Chinese metal technology, but equally for the history of Chinese glass
making. Its triangular and lozenge-shaped plaques with contrasting ’eye’ patterns must have been custom-made near the bronze
foundry to suit the requirements of the vessel. They were specially designed, not only in order to fit in shape, but also in design:
the usually circular or oval white inlays defining the ‘eyes’ were here turned into lozenges and triangles that evenly fill the surface
of the angular or pointed glass plaques. By creating a geometric pattern that no longer immediately evokes eyes, the Chinese
craftsmen freely adjusted the foreign style to suit their own purpose.

The closest vessels known to exist are a pair of hu of similar date and style, recorded as having been excavated at Jincun near
Luoyang in Henan province, where important works of the late Warring States period were excavated around 1930, and are since
preserved in Japan. These two vessels, which are larger (probably 42.5 cm, but published figures vary) and of circular section, are
decorated in a very similar way with an overall diaper design with gold bosses and silver designs and lozenge-shaped and
triangular glass ‘eye plaques’, although the latter show more complex floral patterns. These important works of art are both known
from old photographs only and are virtually unknown outside Japan. Both were originally in the collection of Asano Umekichi,
Osaka. One has been designated ‘Important Cultural Property’, entered the collection of Baron Hosokawa Moritatsu and is now in
the Eisei Bunko, Tokyo (fig. 1).[2] The subsequent history and present whereabouts of the companion jar are unknown (fig. 2).[3]
Yūzō Sugimura describes the Hosokawa jar as “An example of the finest workmanship of late Chou [Zhou] times, probably a family
treasure of one of the kings or feudal rulers of the time”.[4] Max Loehr, in discussing “this dazzling, round Hu”, suggests as its date
the period between about 500 and 300 BC.[5]

The third comparable vessel known to have survived is probably of slightly later date: the famous royal gilt and silvered bronze jar
with glass inlays from the tomb of Liu Sheng, Prince Jing of Zhongshan, who died in 113 BC (fig. 3). This massive vessel, now in the
Hebei Provincial Museum, Shijiazhuang, nearly 60 cm high and weighing 16.25 kg, is considered unique. It is gilded and silvered,
shows silver bosses at the intersections of its diaper design and is also inlaid with lozenge-shaped and triangular glass ‘eye
plaques’.[6] Liu Sheng was a son of the Western Han Emperor Jing Di (r. 154-141 BC) and himself ruled over Zhongshan
principality. He was most lavishly buried in a jade burial suit in a sumptuously appointed tomb in Mancheng county, Hebei
province, and his glass-inlaid bronze hu is inscribed with a palace name.

Chinese glass beads have been discovered at some of China’s most prestigious archaeological sites of the Warring States period.
A series of beads with an ‘eye’ pattern formed of blue dots enclosed by dark brownish rings, on fields of white that are set into a
turquoise-blue ground, very similar to the design on the glass plaques of our fang hu, has been found, for example, in the
important fifth-century BC tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng at Leigudun, Suixian, Hubei province (fig. 4).[7] Glass pieces other than
these foreign-inspired beads were exceedingly rare in the Warring States period. This type of polychrome glass (liuli) with inlaid
‘eye’ and related patterns was in China made for an extremely short period and obviously enjoyed very high prestige.

Experiments were also made with inlaying glass paste into pottery to create replicas of glass-inlaid bronzes such as the present
vessel, probably at the fraction of the cost.[8] Surviving examples are, however, also extremely rare. Those that exist, like a jar in
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig. 5),[9] show related grid designs with bosses at the intersections. These glass-paste pottery
vessels in turn are believed to be the direct antecedents of China’s lead-glazed ceramics.

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