Lot 5. An Ordos openwork gold-sheet fitting, Eastern Zhou (770 BC-221 BC), 7cm., 2 3/4 in. Estimate 500 — 700 GBP. Lot sold 3,500 GBP. Photo: Sotheby's.

the thin gold sheet cut into a rectangular form and partly embellished in openwork with a pair of confronting deer flanking a central column composed of three wheels stacked on top of each other, some parts of the openwork design rendered in repousse, glass frame. Weight 5g.

Exhibited: Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1954-55, cat. no. 31.

Literature: Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, pl. 31.

Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, The Museum of Art and Far Eastern Antiquities in Ulricehamn, Ulricehamn, 1999, pl. 29. 

Note: This unusual fitting is comparable to a number of similarly shaped cast gold and bronze plaques associated with Ordos sites excavated in Inner Mongolia and Siberia and ranging in date from tthe Warring States period to the Western Han dynasty, illustrated in Erduosi shi qingtong qi, Beijing, 1986, p. 79, fig. 46:1 and 2, pl. 60:1. They commonly depict confronting pairs of stags, rams, camels and ox, reflecting the iconographic repertoire and style of the nomadic and pastural cultures along the present-day northern Chinese frontiers, ibid., pp. 76-80, figs. 44-47. Another example cast in gold but dated to the Eastern Han is illustrated in Simon Kwan and Sun Ji, Chinese Gold Ornaments, Hong Kong, 2003, cat. no. 128.