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PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF ROBERT P. YOUNGMAN
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AN ARCHAIC BRONZE WINE VESSEL, JUE For a comparable jue vessel with a similar thin-belt of decoration
Shang dynasty, 13th-11th centuries BCE to the upper body and similarly cast with a bovine-headed handle
With a deep u-shaped body cast in a band below the rim with a dense below two pillars with waisted drum or ‘bobbin’-shaped finials, a
leiwen-like ground with low-relief vertical flanges suggesting dissolved feature that is far less common than the hemispherical or conical
horned-taotie and with a snake-like row of small bosses on each side, caps frequently encountered, see Bernhard Karlgren and Jan Wirgin,
supported on three angled pointed legs, a bovine-headed vertical loop Chinese Bronzes, The Natanael Wessen Collection, The Museum of
handle on one side, set below the curved spouted rim with two large Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1969, pp. 86-87, no. 18.
upright posts with waisted drum finials.
9 ½in (24.1cm) high For another example with conical-cap pillars, see Jessica Rawson,
The Bella and P.P. Chiu Collection of Ancient Chinese Bronzes,
$50,000 - 70,000 Hong Kong, 1988, pp. 50-51, no. 11. Another from the Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford is illustrated by Christian Deydier, Chinese Bronzes,
商 公元前十三至十一世紀 青銅爵 Friborg, Switzerland, 1980, p. 220, no. 35, which shares the dissolved
taotie design in low but fine relief to the central band. The decoration
on the Ashmolean example, continues to the spout.
The bronze jue is a ritual wine vessel with a deep body and open
spout for pouring, two pillars for support, and a pointed tail where Another Late Shang jue recently sold in our London rooms from the
the mouth rim tapers off. It’s greatest popularity came during the Roger Keverne collection, Moving On (II), 7 June, 2021, lot 428.
Shang dynasty but by the early Western Zhou production of these
vessels were suddenly reduced, see Ma Chengyuan, Ancient Chinese For other exzmples of jue, see Masterpieces of Chinese and Japanese
Bronzes, Oxford, 1986, pp. 193-194. Art, Freer Gallery of Art Handbook, 1976, p. 9, no. 56.19.;

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