Page 54 - Status & Ritual Chinese Archaic Bronzes

The inside of the foot of the vessel bears an inscription consisting of four characters, Wei Fu Fu Xin. A
dedication to Fu Xin (Father Xin) is accompanied by two graphs. Above is cast an emblem showing four
footprints encircling a rectangular ring, likely equivalent to a simpler character of oracle script, transcribed
as wei. This may be read as a clan insignia, and commonly accompanies ancestral dedications, as it does
here with Fu Xin, along with another pictograph depicting a quiver of arrows.
Compare the present vessel to a zun of similar style, dated to the Late Shang period, in the Shanghai
Museum, illustrated by Chen Peifen in Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Shanghai Museum, London, 1995,
p. 41. Another example of a zun of this unusual form can be found in the Pillsbury Collection, which is
slightly smaller in size but almost identical in form and decoration. (See B. Karlgren, A Catalogue of the
Chinese Bronzes in the Alfred F. Pillsbury Collection, Minneapolis, 1951, pp. 78-79, no. 26).
A similar fared bronze zun was sold at Christie’s New York, 13-14 September 2012, lot 1226, fg. 1.
A comparable zun, similar in form but without fanges on the upper part, is illustrated by R. Bagley in Shang
Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington DC and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987,
pp. 310-311. Another example of a vessel with prominent fanges, fared base and bulbous mid-section
is the Boge zun of the Baoji City Museum Collection, illustrated by Li Xixing, The Shaanxi Bronzes, Xi’an,
1994, p. 170.

來源:
日本京都藏家S. Kawai 舊藏
荷蘭藏家Dr. A. F Philips (1874-1951)私人舊藏
1978年3月13日於倫敦蘇富比拍賣，拍品21號
重要歐洲私人珍藏

著錄:
梅原末治 著《Nihon Shucho Shina Kodo Seikwa》，1960年，大阪，卷二，編號135
巴納、張光裕 著 《中日歐美澳紐所見所拓所摹金文彙編》, 1978年, 卷九, 編號1408
周法高 著《三代吉金文存補》 1980年，台北，第645號
Minao Hayashi 著《Studies on Yin and Zhou Bronze Decoration: A Conspectus of Yin and
Zhou Bronze Vessels》，1986年， 第223頁，編號20

(fg. 1)

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