Page 117 - 2020 Sept Important Chinese Art Sotheby's NYC Asia Week

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

Glass was employed much more frequently from the Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220) onwards, but then mostly monochrome
glass (boli) was produced that could be used in place of jade or other colored stones. Minor glass inlays in form of small
monochrome dots simulating semi-precious stones are also found on a few bronze vessels: A hu without cover, for example, inlaid
in a very different style with gold, silver, turquoise and small circular pieces of red glass probably meant to simulate agate, was
excavated in Baoji, Shaanxi, and is now in the Baoji Municipal Museum; [10] and a silver-inlaid egg-shaped bronze dui tripod in the
British Museum, London, is also believed to have featured small dots of glass.[11] Glass inlays are otherwise known only from
small bronze objects such as belt hooks. Since this much simpler form of glass was used to replicate more expensive materials, its
prestige in the Han dynasty waned.

The basic shape of our fang hu is well known from late Warring States and early Western Han (206 BC – AD 9) bronzes, although
its depressed, bulging proportions and its pointed, pyramidal cover are unusual. A pair of fang hu of more elongated form and with
pyramidal covers with a flat, ‘cut-off’ tip, also decorated with diaper designs arranged around gold bosses, were inlaid with niello
and originally perhaps semi-precious stones but no glass; one of them, from the collection of Eric Lidow is now in the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (fig. 6)[12], the other, from the collection of Arthur B. Michael and later in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo, New York, was sold in our New York rooms, 20th March 2007, lot 508 (fig. 7).[13] Another related fang hu without cover,
also with metal-inlaid diaper design but with less prominent gold bosses, is in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (fig. 8),[14]
and a very similar vessel is depicted in a woodblock illustration in the catalogue of bronzes in the imperial collection compiled for
the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1795), Xi Qing gu jian (fig. 9).[15]

Sacrificial bronze vessels were of very high importance in Zhou (1045-221 BC) society. They were used during sacrificial
ceremonies to offer food and wine to the ancestors to obtain their protection. As the offerings were subsequently jointly
consumed at ritual banquets, they also served to bond family clans. A vessel such as the present fang hu might have been used to
contain wine in such ceremonies that were held at ancestral temples. The Liji [Classic of Rites], one of China’s classic Confucian
texts on Zhou dynasty rites, written between the Warring States and early Han period, states about sacrificial offerings made to
the Duke of Zhou in the great ancestral temple: “the bronze zun vessels employed were those cast in the forms of the bull victim,
or an elephant, and hills; the vessel for fragrant wine was the one with gilt eyes on it”.[16] ‘Gilt eyes’ (huang mu) may well refer to a
decoration as seen on the present fang hu and its companion pieces.

A century ago, the present fang hu was in the collection of Adolphe Stoclet (1871-1949), a Belgian industrialist, banker and famous
art collector, whose villa in Brussels had been commissioned, down to the last detail, from Josef Hoffman (1870-1956), important
architect and co-founder of the influential art and design cooperative, Wiener Werkstätte. It is considered the most important
intact ensemble preserved from the ‘Jugendstil’ period of the early twentieth century and inscribed by UNESCO as a world
heritage site. Stoclet collected Western as well as non-Western art from around the world, including many major Chinese works.
The piece is visible in a photograph of a room in Stoclet’s house, taken in 1917 (fig. 10). In 1935, Stoclet lent the present bronze
together with twenty-seven other Chinese works of art to the International Exhibition of Chinese Art at the Royal Academy of Arts
in London, the most important exhibition of Chinese art ever mounted (fig. 11).

[1] Zhongguo meishu quanji. Gongyi meishu bian [Complete series on Chinese art. Arts and crafts section], vol. 10: Jin yin boli
falang qi [Gold, silver, glass and enamel wares], Beijing, 1987, pls 201-204; and Shen Congwen & Li Zhitan, Boli shihua/History of
Glassware, Shenyang, 2005, pls 1-7.

[2] The same photographs have been published in Seiichi Mizuno, Bronzes and Jades of Ancient China, Tokyo, 1959, col. pl. 12 and
pl. 176 E; in Yūzō Sugimura, Chinese Sculpture, Bronzes and Jades in Japanese Collections, Honolulu, 1966, part 3, col. pl. 2 and pl.
40; in the exhibition catalogue Chūgoku sanzen nen: bi no bi/Select Works of Ancient Chinese Art, Mitsukoshi, Tokyo, 1973, cat. no.
16; in Li Xueqin, ed., Zhongguo meishu quanji: Gongyi meishu bian [Complete series on Chinese art: Arts and crafts section], vol. 5:
Qingtong qi [Bronzes], vol. 2, Beijing, 1986, pl. 119; and elsewhere.

[3] Umehara Sueji, Rakuyō Kinson kobo shūei/Selection of Tomb Finds from Lo-yang, Chin-ts’un, Kyoto, rev. ed. 1944, pls 18 and 19.

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