Christie's. FINE CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART, 17 September 2008, New York, Rockefeller Plaza
A bronze ritual food vessel, gui, Early Western Zhou dynasty,10th century BC
Lot 349. A bronze ritual food vessel, gui, Early Western Zhou dynasty,10th century BC; 9 5/8 in. (24.3 cm.) across handles. Estimate USD 8,000 - USD 10,000. Price Realized USD 22,500. © Christie's Image Ltd 2008
The swelling body cast below the everted rim with a band of kui dragons in profile with clawed feet and scrolled tails reserved on a leiwen ground confronted on a small animal mask in relief on two sides, with a band of similar dragons on the tall, flared foot, two of the dragons centered by a narrow flange to form taotie masks, the vessel flanked by a pair of loop handles each surmounted by a bovine mask and terminating in a hooked pendent tab, with mottled pale green patina and some malachite and cuprite encrustation.
Provenance: Oscar Gerson, Berkeley, California, early 1970s.
Property from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm E. McPherson.
Exhibited: San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, Hall of Flowers, Treasures of the Orient, Society for Asian Art, 1979, no. 9.
Note: The single pictograph cast inside the interior of the foot of this gu, usually deciphered as zheng (upright), consists of a rounded square and a pair of footprints. A similar graph appears in a jia illustrated by R.W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1987, pp. 158-9, no. 5, who mentions that, although the character is usually taken to be the name of a person, clan or place, the excavation of a yu from a burial near Fu Hao's tomb suggests that it was the name of a marquisate. Bagley cites thirteen other published bronzes in public and private collections which bear this pictograph.
A very similar gu is illustrated by Bagley, ibid., pp. 228-9, no. 29. Another similar example excavated from Xibeigang M1550 at Anyang is illustrated by Li Ji and Wan Jiabao, Yinxu chutu qingtong gu xing qi zhi yanjiu(Studies of the Bronze Gu-Beaker), Taiwan, 1964, pl. 34 and p. 87, fig. 29.