Page 31 - J.J. Lally Chinese Art CHRISTIE'S March 23 2023 NYC

(inscription: interior of vessel) (inscription: interior of cover)

The inscription cast inside the cover consists of the character wen, a regular pattern of triangles and rhombs… It was probably not
probably a clan sign, and a character reading either mu or qi (Lady created de nouveau near the end of the Anyang period but instead
Mu or Lady Qi). The same inscription is cast in the center of the seems to have evolved from early Anyang designs of scorpions.”
base of the vessel, with two additional characters, fu yi (Father Yi). Bagley illustrates, p. 390, a bronze hu and cover in the Museum für
Ostasiatiche Kunst, Köln, featuring a geometricized scorpion.
For a similar bronze you unearthed in 1970 from a Shang dynasty
tomb at Anyang, Henan province, see Shang and Zhou Bronzes A turtle motif similar to that cast on the base of the present vessel
unearth from Henan Province, vol. I, Beijing, 1981, p. 198, no. 249, can be seen in the center of a late Shang bronze ritual water basin
and the example in the Museum of Eastern Antiquities, Oxford, (pan) from the Avery Brundage Collection, and now in the Asian
illustrated by W. Watson in Ancient Chinese Bronzes, London, 1962, Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated by R. Y. d’Argencé
pl. 23a. A larger bronze you (28.6 cm. high) dated 11th century in Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Avery Brundage Collection, San
BC of similar form and with similar decoration and rope-twist Francisco, 1967, p. 38, pl. XIV:B. Another similar turtle motif
handle is illustrated by R. W. Bagley in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the can be seen in a rubbing of a late Shang bronze you illustrated by
Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington, D. C., 1987, p. 388, no. M. Hayashi, In ShĿ jidai seidįki no kenkyĿ (A Study of Shang Zhou
68, where the author notes, p. 390, “The fine angular spirals that Bronzes), vol. II, Tokyo, 1986, p. 294, no. 10-109.
fill the decorated bands differ from leiwen by their arrangement in

(turtle-form motif on base of vessel)

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