Page 60 - Christies September 13 to 14th Fine Chinese Works of Art New York

Music was of great importance in the court life of ancient China, and depictions of musicians playing
instruments, both string and percussion, can be seen in wood and pottery fgures from the Han through
the Tang dynasty, and as decoration on bronzes of Eastern Zhou period. Figures shown playing a set of
bells and stone chimes is shown in a reproduction of decoration on a bronze hu from Baihuatan, Chengdu,
Sichuan province, illustrated by J. So (ed.), Music in the Age of Confucius, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M.
Sackler Gallery, Washington DC, 2000, p. 20, fg. 1.7. As R. W. Bagley states in his chapter on percussion,
ibid., pp. 35-63, “no other instrument tells us so much about musical performance, music theory, and
acoustic technology.” He goes on to point out that “sets of bells were both aurally and visually the most
prominent instruments of musical ensembles” in ancient China, but outside of China were unknown.
Bells (zhong) of this type, with a large loop handle formed by the addorsed bodies of dragons or birds,
are known as bo. They come in various sizes, as they were made in graduated sets, and with variations
in their decoration. A set of eight graduated bo zhong in the Musée Guimet, of smaller size (the largest
29 cm.), cast with similar bands of coiled-serpent bosses, and with a similar handle formed by a pair of
addorsed dragons, is illustrated by C. Delacour, De bronze, d’or et d’argent, Arts somptuaires de la Chine,
Paris, 2001, pp. 44-46. A bo zhong of slightly smaller size (40.8 cm.) with a handle similar to that on the
present bell, but cast with horizontal trapezoids formed of reclining dragons on the striking area, and
relief curls in the central trapezoids and narrow vertical and horizontal borders, is illustrated by J. So in
Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation,
1995, pp. 373, no. 77. Compare, also, a bell of this type, decorated with taotie masks on the striking area,
sold at Christie’s New York, 19 September 2013, lot 1106.

Fragments of models and molds with designs similar to that on the present bo have been found in
foundry sites in the late Spring and Autumn (6th-5th century BC.) capital of the Jin State in modern day
Houma city, Shanxi province. See, two mold fragments with design of dragon-form handle, illustrated in
Art of the Houma Foundry, Princeton, 1996, p. 321, fg. 678. Fragments of a model and a mold with design
of repeated rectangular units containing diagonally placed interlocking snakes are illustrated in ibid., pp.
307-308, fgs. 642 and 645.

58