AN ARCHAIC RITUAL BRONZE WINE VESSEL AND COVER 'HU',

Description:

China, late Warring States period, (Zhanguo, 475-221 BC) 4th or 3rd C. BC or early Western Han dynasty
H. 30 cm
The elegant, baluster shaped bronze vessel was gilded and is divided into three plain registers by three raised horizontal bands in relief with two taotie ring-holder masks in relief holding movable ring handles. The convex cover with three hooked, round lugs which serve as handles and feet when the cover is taken off and returned to be placed. The entire surface is polished and mainly covered with a greyish-green patina with some patches of red cuprite oxide and earth encrustations, on some areas the original gilding is still visible.
Important Austrian private collection, by repute bought in the 1980s from an old German diplomate collection, assembled in China in the early 20th c.
Published: Publ.: Zeileis 'From Shang to Qing - Three and a Half Millennia of Chinese Bronze', 1999, No. 79, pp. 288-289
Cf. Jenny F. So, “Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections”, Vol. III, 1995, no. 50, pp. 278-283, a similar, more sturdy and rotund “hu” with different decoration in three registers, but without the cover, dated to late Warring States period, 4th-3rd C. BC and with further references. - The Palace Museum (ed.), Bronzes in the Palace Museum, Beijing 1999, no. 318, p. 313, a “hu” with cover of similar shape and decoration, dated to late Zhanguo period - Sotheby’s New York, 20.9.2000, lot 44, a taller hu with plain body except three flat, horizontal bands and no cover, h: 46 cm, dated probably too late to the Han Dynasty and with further references
Wear, traces of age