Page 84 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

Fig. 5. Drawing of clay mollis in graduated sizes for
casting bosses on bronze bells ofgraduated sizes.
Late 6th- early 5th century BCE. Niucun, Houma,
Shanxi Province. (Drawings by Li Xiating [Shanxi
Institute ofArchaeology]).

such a process of replication is illustrated by the

Freer hu and the Palace Museum basin. The densely

multilayered and interlacing designs that typify this

production method may have been developed in

conjunction with it, the better to camouflage the
joins between pattern units, as well as the minor

adjustments for fit that may become necessary as
the units are repeated on vessels of different

curvatures, circumferences, and shapes.

The sixth- and fifth-century bce workshops that Fig. 6. Drawing of sets of bronze vessels (4 hu, 6 and 7
produced these bronzes had progressed well beyond
the twelfth- and eleventh-century Shang foundries ding, 8 dou, 4 jian, 5 and 14 bo) from finshengcun
that made individual bronzes, each from its own set ,

Aof hand-carved clay molds. section-mold maker Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. Late 6th—early $th century

at an Anyang foundry would probably have had to BCE. (Drawings by Li Xiating [Shanxi Institute of
have a fair idea ot the shape, size, and decoration of
Archaeology]).
his finished vessel. A model or mold maker at the
Houma foundry would probably have been familiar

with only that element of the vessel for which he

—was responsible a lid or a handle or a foot or a
—unit ot decoration but not with the completed

object. In the late sixth- to early fifth-century

bronze foundry at Houma one can see perhaps the

source of the streamlined division of labor and
mass-production techniques associated with the

renowned Ming and Qing dynasty porcelain

workshops operating at Jmgdezhen,Jiangxi
Province, nearly two thousand years later (see essays

by Wang Qingzheng and Regina Krahl in this

volume).

Cultural diversity and increased contact among the duck-shaped spout characteristic of ceramic he

divers cultures, along with social and political vessels from the southeastern coastal provinces of
mobility, proved to be major invigorating forces for
the bronze industry through the end of the first Jiangsu and Zhejiang, while retaining the more
millennium bce. Sculptural bronzes and animal
appendages on bronze vessels continued to be traditional Zhou shape, handle, and legs (fig. 8).
major provincial features (cats. 33, 37, 38, 55-58). The endearingly awkward elephant-shaped vessel

The spouted vessel (he; cat. 38), 35 from a tenth- (cat. 37) from Rujiazhuang, Baoji county, Shaanxi

century bce context in the city of Pingdingshan, Province, is a tenth-century bce local descendant of

central Henan Province, quaintly borrowed the the boar- and elephant-shaped bronzes of a few

Oncenturies
earlier (cats. 27, 3<1 the

25).

INNOVATION IN ANCIENT CHINESE METALWORK 82