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Lot 270
AN INSCRIBED RITUAL FOOD VESSEL AND COVER 'DUI'
Estimated Value:
2.500 € - 3.500 €
Result:
9.065 € incl. Premium and VAT
Description:
China, Warring States period, ca. 4th c. BCH. 24,8 cm
The type of food vessel composed of two equal parts may have come into use only toward the end of the Spring and Autumn period in the sixth century BCE. It is decorated with highly stylized dragons in ring-shaped handles on the lid and the stand. Besides, each of the two bowls shows two additional simple handles, also ring-shaped, facing each other near the non-fluted rim. In order to be able to fix the lid, three small overhanging holders sit on its edge, anchoring it securely to it. Only the part serving as the lid bears an inscription consisting of probably thirty-two (or perhaps more) characters, but this is obscured by the sometimes considerable incrustations and consequently appears difficult to read. Bronze cast in two parts, large areas of granular bluish and green encrusted sintering and ruffled dark reddish brown patina in those places where the metal does not have encrustations.
Important Austrian private collection, according to records acquired in the 1990s
Publ. Zeileis 'From Shang to Qing - Three and a Half Millennia of Chinese Bronze', 1999, no. 83, pp. 242 - 243
A similar bronze dui, Warring States period, excavated from Tomb No.1 at Wangshan, Jiangling in 1965, and now in the collection of the Hubei Provincial Museum, is illustrated in Pre-Qin Civilization in the Jiangshan Region, Hong Kong, 1999, p.110, no.72. See another example illustrated by Kao Jen-chun, Masterworks of Chinese Bronzes in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1973, no.18; compare also with a similar dui, reportedly from Anhui Shou Xian Zhujiaji, 2nd half of 3rd century BC, illustrated by J.So, Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M.Sackler Collections, New York, 1995, p.69, fig.126
Wear, partly corroded
