J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York

Compare the very similar bronze taotie mask of slightly larger size described as a “Bronze Horse Mask with Animal-Mask Design” (ma guan), in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Bronze Articles for Daily Use, Hong Kong, 2007, p. 9, no. 7, recorded as from the Qing Court collection and attributed to the Western Zhou dynasty. The author goes on to note the discovery of similar bronze masks in a Western Zhou burial with chariots and horses at Zhangjiapo, Xi’an, demonstrating that this type of mask was made for use as a chanfron or decorative frontlet mounted on the forehead of a horse.

A bronze taotie mask of smaller size unearthed from a Shang dynasty site in Huangbo district, a suburb of Wuhan city, Hubei province, is illustrated in the excavation report entitled Panlongcheng (The Panlongcheng Site: Report of Archaeological Excavation from 1963-1994), Vol.s I-II, Beijing, 2001, p. 428, pl. 314, nos. 3-4 in Vol. I; and col. pl. XLVII, no. 3 and pl. CXL, no. 5 in Vol. II. Another smaller taotie mask described as late Shang dynasty in the collection of the Shaanxi Provincial Museum is illustrated in Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi (Shang and Zhou Bronzes Unearthed in Shaanxi Province), Vol. I, Beijing, 1979, no. 39.

A bronze taotie mask of this type excavated in 1976 from a Western Zhou site at Zhuyuangou, Baoji city, now in the collection of Baoji City Museum, is illustrated in the catalogue of the special exhibition shown at the International Museum of the Horse, Lexington, Kentucky, entitled Imperial China: The Art of the Horse in Chinese History, Prospect, 2000, p. 74, no. 1, together with line drawings illustrating the way in which the mask was mounted on the horse’s head. The same bronze mask is illustrated by Li (ed.) in Shaanxi qingtongqi (The Shaanxi Bronzes), Xi’an, 1994, p. 325, no. 285; and in the excavation report published in Wenwu, 1978, No. 5, pl. 2, no. 3.

Other bronze horse masks in museum and private collections are illustrated by Owyoung in Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, 1997, pp. 124-125, no. 34; by Wang in Chinese Bronzes from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 2009, pp. 137-138, nos. 137-138; and by Kelley and Ch’en in Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1946, pls. XL-XLI, pp. 72-75.