Page 196 - Sotheby's NYC September 20 2022 Forging An Empire Bronzes

his flattened oval-shaped wine flask represents the influence of the nomadic pastoralists
during the 5th to 3rd centuries BC on bronze designs of the Warring States period.
TThese nomadic peoples, who traveled with all their possessions by horse and cart,
carried drinking flasks made from wood or leather which were often suspended by cords. The bronze
interpretation of this drinking flask was an innovation of the Warring States period, whereby the
suspension cords were transformed into strips of bronze inlaid with copper.

Here, the two oval sides are subdivided into rectangles, staggered on successive levels like brickwork,
each cast with a tight ‘feather curl’ pattern in relief, emphasizing the creative approach taken toward
surface ornamentation during the late Bronze Age. The tight spiral patterns within each rectangular
panel were made with carved ceramic stamps, which were pressed into the still-soft surface of the clay
mold before the vessel was cast.

It is exceptionally rare to find a bianhu with its original bronze cover. One example from the Peter
Moores Foundation, now in Compton Verney, Warwickshire, was included in the exhibition China. The
Three Emperors, 1662-1795, Royal Academy of Arts, London, cat. no. 203; another from the Meiyintang
Collection is illustrated in Wang Tao, Chinese Bronzes from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 2009, pl.
49; a third from the Frank Arts Collection in Belgium was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29th May 2012,
lot 4136.

The number of extant bronze bianhu surviving without their covers has led to the speculation that
some of the covers may have been made from fragile organic materials, such as wood or lacquer.
One example of a bianhu without a cover, excavated at Shangcunling, Sanmenxia, Henan province
in 1975 and now in the Henan Provincial Museum, Zhengzhou, is illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi
quanji [Complete Collection of Chinese Bronzes], vol. 8, Beijing, 1995, pl. 143 and on the slipcase. Other
examples in important museum collections include one from the Buckingham Collection, now in the
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (accession no. 1937.1), illustrated in Charles Fabens Kelley and Ch’en
Ming-Chai, Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection, Chicago, 1946, pl. LVII; another in the
Kunstindustrimuseum, Copenhagen, illustrated in the catalogue Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China,
The Asia Society, New York, 1968, cat. no. 65; and a third in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los
Angeles (accession. no. M.75.111.3), illustrated in George Kuwayama, Ancient Ritual Bronzes of China,
Los Angeles, 1976, cat. no. 46. Another example, formerly with J.T. Tai & Co., was first sold in our London
rooms, 25th March 1975, lot 159, and again in these rooms, 22nd March 2011, lot 202.