Page 128 - Sotheby's NYC September 20 2022 Forging An Empire Bronzes

intermediary, apparently still of Shang date, is a fang ding from Fufeng in Shaanxi, published in Robert
W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington, D.C., 1987, p. 129, fig.
192; but the Western Zhou style is clearly represented by a related vessel with a rare cover in the Palace
Museum, Beijing, the Tian Gao Fang Ding excavated in Baoji, Shaanxi province, previously attributed to
the late Shang, but now to the early Western Zhou period, published in Gugong qingtong qi/Bronzes in
the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1999, pl. 23; and in Gugong jingdian. Gugong qingtong qi tudian/Classics of
the Forbidden City. Bronzes of the Forbidden City, Beijing, 2010, pl. 57; another, very similar to the Gugong
example, is illustrated in Bernhard Karlgren, ‘New Studies on Chinese Bronzes’, Bulletin of the Museum
of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 9, 1937, pl. XXVIII, no. 18, where the author calls this Western Zhou type of
taotie motif ‘animal triple band’. On the earlier style of the present vessel, the scroll elements of the taotie
motifs are much more freely assembled around the eyes.

The inscription on our fang ding contains a clan sign, which is composed of the pictographs of a human
figure and a toad, and the characters fu yi, ‘Father Yi’. A similar clan sign has been interpreted by Hentze
as a divine ancestor figure arising from an animal head (Carl Hentze, ‘Antithetische T’ao-t’ieh Motive’, in
Herbert Kühn, ed., IPEK. Jahrbuch für Prähistorische & Ethnographische Kunst, vol. 23, Berlin, 1972, pp.
3f. and pl. 3, fig. 18).

The present vessel is recorded since at least the Guangxu period of the late Qing dynasty, when Wu
Dacheng (1835-1902) included it in his compilation of bronze inscriptions, published in 1896. Wu was
a scholar-official, compiler of the Imperial Han Lin Academy, and renowned collector of archaic works
of art, who discussed and exchanged items with a group of famous contemporary connoisseurs and
bronze collectors such as Pan Zuyin (1830-1930), Chen Jieqi (1813-1884), Wang Yirong (1845-1900)
and others. One of whom must have owned the present vessel, since the inscriptions Wu assembled in
his Kezhai jigulu came from his own bronzes and those of his friends. Wu himself owned a somewhat
different pair of fang ding decorated with confronted dragons on a leiwen ground above the plain band,
and with prominent flanged at the corners, which appear in a set of composite rubbings of archaic
bronzes made for Wu by Yin Bohuan, and again in the Kezhai jigu tu, a handscroll of rubbings done by
Wu and others, and are today in the Shanghai Museum, see Wang Tao, Mirroring China’s Past. Emperors,
Scholars, and Their Bronzes, The Art Institute of Chicago, New Haven and London, 2018, cat. nos 146 and
154, and p. 194, fig. 9.

編，《IPEK Jahrbuch für Prähistorische & Ethnogra- 《愙齋集古錄》所錄拓本均來自其本人及友人收
phische Kunst》，柏林，1972年，卷23，頁3f及圖版 藏，故可知本鼎源自吳大澂或其朋友所藏。吳大澂
3，圖 18）。 另藏一方鼎，略異於本品，上層紋飾以雷紋地襯對
稱龍紋，邊緣出戟突出，可見尹伯圜拓本，亦載於
本鼎著錄可溯至晚清光緒年間，吳大澂（1835-1902
吳大澂及友人手拓之《愙齋集古圖》，現存上海博
）1896年彙編金石銘文成書，已記載此器。吳大
物館，參考汪濤著《吉金鑒古》，芝加哥美術學
澂，翰林院編修，收藏高古金石甚豐，與同時期
院，紐黑文及倫敦，2018年，編號 146 及154 號，
重要金石鑒藏家如潘祖蔭（1830-1890）、陳介祺
以及頁194，圖9。
（1813-1884）及王懿榮 （1845-1900）等相交甚
篤，經常見面或通信，討論及交換藏品。吳大澂著

126 POWER / CONQUEST: THE FORGING OF EMPIRES