The heavily cast body with three equal lobes rising from tall columnar legs and bordered with double bow-string bands to form a chevron pattern, with further double bow-string bands around the base of the trumpet neck interrupted by a bovine mask cast at the top of the loop handle, with a three-character inscription within a rectangular panel cast on the body behind the handle, with green encrustation on the sides, handle and interior.
Provenance: Previously sold at Christie's New York, 22 March 2007, lot 241.
Note: The inscription consists of three graphs placed within a yaxing: the character zi (son), and pictographs of a stone axe and a tiger.
Compare the jia of very similar form discovered near Anyang, Henan province dated to the late Shang dynasty and now in the collection of the Archaeological Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences illustrated in Zhongguo Qingtongqi Quanji, vol. 3, Beijing, 1997, pl. 52. Unlike the present jia, the excavated example has a band of dragons cast around the shoulder.
Christie's. The Imperial Sale Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Hong Kong, 31 May 2010