Page 54 - Bonhams Cornette Saint Cyr, Property from the estate of Jean-Pierre Rousset (1936-2021)

Image courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing Image courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art,
Washington DC

This exceptional large bronze vessel would have served as wine The broad ribbons on the vessel are edged with narrow ones, a
container. Its enormous proportions and elaborate decorative design combination also seen in the wave patterns on one of the Wei Bo
give it a magnificent sense of dynamic motion. Xing vessels. On the basis of this comparison, many of the large hu
decorated with elephant-shaped handles and taotie masks composed
Ritual bronze vessels were among the most highly prized and of flat ribbons, such as the present lot, can be dated to the second half
technically sophisticated objects manufactured in early China. of the mid Western Zhou dynasty; see J.Rawson, Western Zhou Ritual
Reserved for use by the most powerful families of the time, they carried Bronzes from the Arthur M.Sackler Collections, vol.IIA, Cambridge MA,
the offerings presented to the ancestors during the performance 1990, pp.89 and 90-91, figs.132 and 133 for two similar bronze fang
of rituals. Honoured and commemorated through the use of these hu vessels flanked by elephant handles, late Western Zhou dynasty,
precious vessels, the ancestral spirits were thought to confer blessings the latter in the Shaanxi Provincial Museum.
on their descendants while at the same time, the use of the vessel
displayed to the living the power and wealth of their owners. Another similar bronze vessel, late Western Zhou dynasty, but
missing its cover and without the stylised phoenix register around the
In its traditional Shang and early Zhou forms, the taotie design was shoulders, from the Qing Court Collection, is illustrated in Bronzes in
rectangular and somewhat out of place among ribboned birds and the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1999, no.205, pp.214-215. See also a
dragons, thus casters sought another type of taotie known as the related bronze fang hu, mid Western Zhou dynasty, in the Freer Gallery
dismembered taotie with the features of the face separated and built of Art, but missing its cover and with beast-shaped handles
up of narrow ribbons. A number of large bronze vessels of rounded (acc.no.F1913.21).
rectangular cross section, such as the present lot, with similar forms of
taotie were greatly enlarged. Compare with a very similar archaic bronze vessel and cover, Zhou
dynasty, 9th century BC, illustrated in Sekai kokugaku taikei, vol.6,
Tokyo, 1958, pl.137, which was later sold at Christie’s New York,
2 June, 1989, lot 99.

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