Lot 508. A rare copper-inlaid archaic bronze wine vessel with gilt bosses, fanghu, Warring States period, 4th century BC. Height 19 in., 48.2 cm. Estimate 300,000 — 500,000 USD. Lot sold 288,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

of square section, with a tall slightly flaring neck leading down to a swelling belly, cast overall with gilt-raised bosses reserved on a finely cast lozenge ground with a hooks-and-volutes pattern and inlaid with copper niello, each diamond separated by diagonal bands of further fine hooks-and-volutes, the recesses possibly originally inlaid with turquoise or malachite, on two sides the shoulders cast with an animal mask securing a loose ring handle, all supported on a square foot skirted by a band of large triangle geometric patterns, the truncated pyramidal cover similarly decorated and further set with four upright rings with hooked tabs, the dark green patina covered with green malachite encrustation (2).

Provenance: Collection of Arthur B. Michael, Newton Center, MA (bequest of 1942).
Collection of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, no. 1942:16.402.

Note: This magnificent vessel, whose history - like that of most pieces in this collection - can be traced back to the Arthur B. Michael's bequest of 1942, was originally one of a pair. Its companion piece was included in An Exhibition of Chinese Bronzes, C.T. Loo & Co., New York, 1939, cat.no. 29, illustrated pl. XV; and again in An Exhibition of Ancient Chinese Ritual Bronzes Loaned by C.T. Loo & Co., The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, 1940, cat.no. 73, illustrated pl. XXXII; later in the collection of Eric Lidow, and now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it is illustrated and discussed in Jenny So, Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, New York, 1995, p. 62, fig. 110.

Max Loehr, who discusses "this superb vessel" in detail in the Asia Society exhibition catalogue (op.cit., p. 154), placed it in the second of eight phases of stylistic development and attributed it to a period between 500 and 300 BC. Jenny So, who also writes about this stylistic evolution (op.cit., pp. 62f), suggests a fourth-century BC date for the Los Angeles County Museum example and its pair (the present vessel), based on a comparison with a more recently excavated pair of fang hu from the tomb of King Cuo of Zhongshan in Pingshan, Hebei province, which is datable to the late fourth century BC. She further illustrates a fang hu in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (op.cit., fig. 112), which combines stylistic features of both these pairs of vessels.  

Another inlaid fang hu with a similar geometric diaper design, but without the prominent bosses was included in the exhibition Sculpture and Ornament in Early Chinese Art, Eskenazi, London, 1996, cat.no. 3. Other fang hu with related designs of more complicated layout, also lacking the bosses, include one excavated in Shanxian, Henan province and now preserved in the National Museum of China, Beijing, included in the exhibition The Great Bronze Age of China, New York, 1980, pl. 73, where the present piece is quoted for comparison; and one in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., published in John Alexander Pope et al., The Freer Chinese Bronzes, Washington D.C., 1967, vol. I, pl. 94. A final comparison in the Hebei Provincial Museum, is illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji, vol. 9, Beijing, 1997, pl. 155.