Page 28 - Christies September 13 to 14th Fine Chinese Works of Art New York

PROPERTY FROM THE MACLEAN COLLECTION, ILLINOIS
1108
A SMALL BRONZE RITUAL TRIPOD FOOD VESSEL, DING LITERATURE
LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 13TH-12TH CENTURY BC Chen Mengjia, Yin Zhou qingtongqi fenlei tulu (In Shu seidoki bunrui zuroku;
A Corpus of Chinese Bronzes in American Collections), Tokyo, 1977, nos. A21
The deep body is raised on three columnar legs and is decorated around the
sides with leiwen-flled triangles pendent from a band of birds alternating (illustration) and R128 (inscription).
with raised whorl bosses, all reserved on a leiwen ground and below a pair of Zhou Fagao, Sandaijijin wencun bu (Supplements of surviving writings from
bail handles that rise from the rim. A two-character clan sign, Ya Bi, is cast the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties), Taipei, 1980, no. 128 (inscription only).
in the center of the interior. The bronze has an attractive olive-green patina Yan Yiping, Jinwen Zongji (Corpus of Bronze Inscriptions), Taipei, 1983, no. 277
with some minor encrustation and traces of black inlay in the recessed areas. (inscription only).
Together with a line drawing of the present lot by Hongwei Dong. The Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
Yinzhou jinwen jicheng (Compendium of Yin and Zhou Bronze Inscriptions),
6º in. (15.8 cm.) high Beijing, 1984, no. 1398 (inscription only).
Wang Tao and Liu Yu, A Selection of Early Chinese Bronzes with Inscriptions
from Sotheby’s and Christie’s, Shanghai, 2007, no. 29.
$60,000-80,000
R. A. Pegg and Lidong Zhang, The MacLean Collection: Chinese Ritual Bronzes,
Chicago, 2010, pp. 40-41, no. 3.
PROVENANCE Wu Zhenfeng, Shangzhou qingtongqi mingwen ji tuxiang jicheng
C.T. Loo & Co., New York. (Compendium of Inscriptions and Images of Bronzes from the Shang
Christie’s New York, 10 December 1987, lot 2. and Zhou Dynasties), Shanghai, 2012, vol. 1, p. 412, no. 523.
Christie’s New York, 18 September 1997, lot 325.
商晚期 亞弜鼎
The clan sign consists of a ya cruciform shape and the name Bi. In the
Shang dynasty, clans with the ya added to their clan names are believed to
be those that were conferred with the title of Marquis. The same clan sign
can be found on a massive ding vessel and fve nao bells from the Fu Hao
tomb, illustrated in Tomb of Lady Hao at Yinxu in Anyang, Beijing, 1980, p. 41,
fg. 28 and pl. LXII (1), respectively. According to archaeologists, ibid, p. 234,
“those bronzes bearing ya Bi and ya Qi clan signs (found in the Fu Hao tomb)
are probably tributes from local polities and clans”. The close connection
between the ya Bi clan and the Shang royal family as seen by these tributes,
and the massive size of ya Bi ding found in the Fuhao tomb demonstrate the
power and wealth of the ya Bi clan.

(inscription) Accompanying line drawing by Hongwei Dong.

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