Page 86 - Status & Ritual Chinese Archaic Bronzes

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A RARE BRONZE ELLIPTICAL VESSEL AND COVER, XU
EARLY EASTERN ZHOU, SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD (6TH CENTURY BC)

春秋 青銅橢圓形盨

Of compressed form, the vessel has a pair of loop handles with animal heads, all supported on four legs
with animal heads and claws. The cover is surmounted by a fared crown fnial with openwork sides,
decorated on the top with an interlaced rope design. The bronze has a mottled greyish-green patina.

8.6/8 in. (22 cm.) diam. across the handles

£40,000-60,000 $63,000-93,000
€55,000-82,000

PROVENANCE

The collection of Raf Y. Mottahedeh, New York, before 14 January 1981.
Sotheby’s Parke Bernet New York, 4 November 1978, lot. 296.
From an important private European collection.

A very similar elliptical covered vessel but with human-form feet in the Royal Ontario Museum is illustrated
by J. So, in Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections; New York & Washington,
D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Foundation & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1995, p.313,
fg. 61.1. Another is illustrated in B. Karlgren, A Catalogue of the Chinese Bronzes in the Alfred F. Pillsbury
Collection, 1952, Minneapolis, pp.136-137, no.50, pl.70. These vessels all bear similar fared crowns with
openwork lattice decoration and ring-shaped animal-form handles with a hooked lower projection.

See also the elliptical vessel in the Collection of the Shaanxi History Museum, illustrated in Li Xixing, The
Shaanxi Bronzes, Xi’an, 1994, p. 123, with human-form rather than animal-form legs.

來源:
美國紐約Rafi Y. Mottahedeh私人舊藏，於1981年1月14日購入
1978年11月4日於紐約蘇富比拍賣，拍品296號
重要歐洲私人珍藏

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