Page 11 - Status & Ritual Chinese Archaic Bronzes

wide mouth and rest on a circular foot. From the Western Lot 6
Zhou period onward, many vessels were equipped covers to Lot 18
protect the contents and, presumably, to keep liquids from Lot 8
evaporating (lots 22, 23, 29). Wine-serving vessels include
ewers, termed he (lot 24), as well trumpet-mouthed gu (lot 8)
and zun (lots 12, 21) beakers, which typically ascend from a
circular base, constrict to a narrow waist with a bulbous knop,
and then terminate in a boldly flaring lip. Similar in shape, gu
and zun beakers differ in their proportions, the gu claiming a
slender, elegant form, the zun a stout, assertive shape.

Most vessels from the Shang dynasty were intended for use
in ceremonies honoring the spirits of deceased ancestors. As
such, many bear integrally cast, dedicatory inscriptions that
include the name of the person in whose ceremonies they
presumably were used. The so-called bronze-script characters
are related to contemporaneous oracle-bone characters – that
is, characters carved on ox scapulae or turtle plastrons as
part of a divination process employed in Shang times – and
they are the direct ancestor of modern written Chinese.
Inscriptions on Shang-dynasty vessels typically feature only a
few characters, sometimes even just a single character, which
might be a personal name or a clan symbol or totem. Three of
the Shang vessels in this collection boast inscriptions (lots 8,
18, 19). Shang inscriptions, which typically follow a prescribed
formula, virtually always appear in the same designated spot
on a particular vessel type: under the handle on a jue wine
vessel (lots 18, 19), for example, inside the foot of a gu or
zun beaker, and on an interior wall of a ding cauldron. Like a
number of characters in Shang inscriptions, the single graph
on the gu wine vessel has not been identified; perhaps a
personal name, the character appears on at least two other
vessels. The single character, almost certainly a name, on
the jue wine vessel of lot 19 reads Bing丙 , while the three-
character inscription on the jue of lot 18 reads Shi Fu Gui 史
父 癸and can be translated as “Scribe Father Gui”, indicating
that the vessel was dedicated to Father Gui.

By the Western Zhou period, bronze vessels often were cast
for commemorative as well as sacral purposes. Generally short,
the inscriptions on ritual vessels of the period typically follow
the well-established Shang format. Thus the inscriptions on
the two zun wine vessels read Wei Fu Fu Xin 衛 箙 父 辛 (lot
12), indicating that it is dedicated to Father Xin, and X Zuo
Bao Zun Yi X 乍 寶 尊 彝 (lot 21), which can be translated

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