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Lot 52
TWO ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSELS, GU AND JUE Shang Dynasty, Anyang phase, 12th-11th century BC
14 December 2023, 17:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$44,800 inc. premium
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TWO ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSELS, GU AND JUE
Shang Dynasty, Anyang phase, 12th-11th century BC
Comprising a beaker vase with wide trumpet mouth, the short body and flaring foot each divided by four flanges and finely decorated with two sets of taotie masks, the waist with two bowstrings above a frieze of 'cicada' pattern, the dark grey bronze with green malachite encrustation in areas; together with a libation cup support by three splayed blade-shaped legs, finely modeled with a pair of posts with 'mushroom' caps centered between the spout and the pointed tail, the cylindrical body with rounded base decorated with a frieze of taotie masks, a pictogram cast to one side, below the simple bovine head loop handle, the smooth dark-grey metal with green malachite encrustations throughout.
12 1/16in (30.5cm) high of gu;
8in (20.3cm) width of jue (2).
Comprising a beaker vase with wide trumpet mouth, the short body and flaring foot each divided by four flanges and finely decorated with two sets of taotie masks, the waist with two bowstrings above a frieze of 'cicada' pattern, the dark grey bronze with green malachite encrustation in areas; together with a libation cup support by three splayed blade-shaped legs, finely modeled with a pair of posts with 'mushroom' caps centered between the spout and the pointed tail, the cylindrical body with rounded base decorated with a frieze of taotie masks, a pictogram cast to one side, below the simple bovine head loop handle, the smooth dark-grey metal with green malachite encrustations throughout.
12 1/16in (30.5cm) high of gu;
8in (20.3cm) width of jue (2).
Footnotes
商 安陽時期 紀元前十二-十一世紀 青銅觚 青銅聿爵 各一件
The pictogram on the bronze jue may be read as yu 聿, possibly a clan sign.
Bronze gu and jue are the two iconic forms amongst Shang ritual wine vessels. As Rawson noted in The British Museum Book of Chinese Art, London, 1992, "While almost all later bronze vessel shapes were based on Neolithic ceramics, the source of the earliest type of all, the jue, is something of a mystery." Bronze gu and jue vessels were almost always part of the set, while other forms of ritual vessels may be added or distracted according to hierarchy. Rawson further illustrates a gu and a jue from the early Shang period in the book, op. cit., p. 57, pl. 27 as an example.
The bronze gu and jue in the present lot belong to the later period of the Shang. Compare, for example, the similar bronze gu unearthed in 1957 from Lanjiagou, Shilou, Shanxi province and now in the collection of the Shanxi Provincial Museum, illustrated in Compendium of Chinese Bronze, Volume IV, Shang (4), Dongguan, 1998, p. 65, no. 67. Compare the similar bronze jue with a three-character inscription to one side of the body underneath the handle, unearthed in 1970 from M1080, Anyang, Henan province, illustrated in Compendium of Chinese Bronze, Volume III, Shang (3), p. 17, no. 17.