Page 10 - Status & Ritual Chinese Archaic Bronzes

Archaic Chinese Bronzes:

An Overview

Robert D. Mowry 毛 瑞
Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus,
Harvard Art Museums, and
Senior Consultant, Christie’s

We appreciate works of art for their beauty and for the invaluable information that they convey
about the peoples and cultures that produced them. We often forget, however, that many works
can tell us as much about a civilisation’s level of technological sophistication as about its artistic
and aesthetic sensibilities. In particular, those works whose creation required high temperatures,
whether for firing, in the case of ceramics, or smelting, in the case of bronze, are true measures
of a civilisation’s technological prowess.

Such well-known Chinese inventions as paper and the magnetic compass evince that China was
among the world’s technological leaders already during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), but
the superb casting of the bronze ritual vessels of the Shang (c. 1600-c. 1030 BC) and Zhou
(c. 1030-221 BC) dynasties attests to an exceptionally high level of technological prowess well
before the advent of the Han. In fact, the ritual vessels created during the Shang and Zhou
dynasties rank among the finest examples of bronze casting the world has ever seen; thus
they speak to China’s extraordinary technological attainments already in the earliest historical
periods. The fine selection of ritual bronzes in the collection that Christie’s will offer in its
10 November 2015 sale well demonstrates this phenomenon. Bronze casting came fully into
its own during the Shang dynasty with the production of sacral vessels intended for use in
funerary ceremonies. Those vessels include ones for food and wine as well as ones for water;
those for food and wine, the types most commonly encountered, group themselves into storage
and presentation vessels, heating and cooking vessels, and serving vessels. Vessels for storage
and presentation generally assume one or another jar or bottle form (lots 6, 11, 13). Heating
and cooking vessels (lots 4, 7, 9, 18, 19) typically rest on columnar- or blade-shaped legs –
circular vessels with three legs, square ones with four – which elevate them above the open
fire, permitting even heating of the contents. Cooking vessels from the Eastern Zhou period
(770-221 BC) often stand on cabriole legs that terminate in a hoof or paw (lots 9, 16, 22).
Ding cauldrons, which were used for heating and cooking food, from the Shang and Western
Zhou (c. 1030-770 BC) periods typically also claim vertically oriented loop handles (lots 4, 9);
in earlier examples the handles rise directly upward from the lip (lot 4), but in the slightly
later ones the handles often spring laterally from the lip and then rise vertically. Such wine-
heating vessels as the jia and jue (lots 18, 19) characteristically have small capped posts that
rise upward from the lip, as does the square li food-cooking vessel (lot 7). The loop handles
and capped pillars likely facilitating removal of the vessel from the fire after heating (perhaps
by passing a rod through the loop handles or by grasping the posts with a tool akin to tongs).
Resembling bowls and dishes, food-serving vessels (lots 14, 17, 20, 22, 23) typically boast a

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