J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York
MenuPast Exhibition
Chinese Archaic Bronzes:
The Collection of Daniel Shapiro
March 14 - April 5, 2014
5.
HU 壺
Shang Dynasty, 12th Century B.C.
of wide pear shape and oval section, decorated with a raised frieze filled with two taotie, each formed by a pair of kui dragons with large horns and long curled tails cast in flat relief on a ground of fine spiral scroll, their bulging rounded eyes confronted on a central flange and their open jaws combined to make the mouth of the taotie, and with small birds with raised eyes at either side under the dragons’ tails and flanking two lug handles cast in relief with monster heads with open jaws and prominent eyes under curved ram’s horns, all beneath a raised ‘bowstring’ band, the upper neck stepped out and flaring slightly to a wide mouth, the plain rounded body of the vessel raised on a high hollow foot with slightly splayed sides decorated with long-tailed birds with hooked beaks, curled crests and raised claws, lined up in pairs confronted on two flanges below four rectangular apertures evenly spaced around the top of the foot, aligned with the flanges and lug handles, the surface with brightly mottled green malachite and reddish cuprite corrosion.
Height 13 3⁄4 inches (35 cm)
Provenance
J. J. Lally & Co., Bronze and Gold in Ancient China, New York, 2003, no. 4
A hu of very similar form and design but lacking the birds at the top and bottom, excavated in 1977 from a Shang tomb in Xiejiagou, Qingjian county, Shaanxi province, is illustrated in Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi, (Shang and Zhou Bronzes Unearthed in Shaanxi province), Vol. I, Beijing, 1979, pl. 75. Another similar hu cast with less elaborate taotie and dragon decoration in the same format, excavated at Gaolouzhuang, Anyang, Henan province in 1957 is illustrated in Kaogu, 1963, No. 4, p. 215, fig. 3:2 and is illustrated again in Henan chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi (Shang and Zhou Bronzes Unearthed in Henan Province), Beijing, 1981, pl. 286.
Compare also the hu of very similar form decorated with taotie and kui dragons in the same style, illustrated in the Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Shang and Chou Dynasty Bronze Wine Vessels, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1989, p. 111, pl. 25, from the Imperial Collection.
商 壺 高 35 厘米
