Lot 28. A gilt-bronze bear-form support, Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). Height 2 5/8  in., 6.6 cm. Lot sold 23,750 USD (Estimate 15,000 — 20,000 USD). Photo Sotheby's

hollow-cast in a half-kneeling position with fore paws resting on its knees and its jaw open, the body finely incised with hair markings and small openings where turquoise was inlaid, with a D-shaped aperture in the top of the head and a circular opening in the base, fitted wood stand (2). 

Provenance: Collection of Adolphe Stoclet prior to 1933.
An old Japanese collection before the 1970s and thence by descent.

Exhibited: Osaka Municipal Museum, 1975.

Literature: Umehara Sueji, Obei Shucho Shina Kodo Seika (Selected Relics of Ancient Chinese Bronzes from Collections in Europe and America), Osaka, 1933, vol. 6, no. 62b.

Note: Bear-form supports of this type were made as legs for vessels (probably for a lian, zun or pan vessel). Compare similar gilt-bronze bears supporting a lian wine container and a pan tray, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Zhongguo wenwu jinghua dacidian: qing tong juan (Grand Dictionary of Gems of Chinese Cultural Relics: Bronzes), Shanghai, 1995, p. 334, no. 1199.