An exceedingly rare and important archaic bronze elephant-form ritual wine vessel (Zun), Middle Western Zhou dynasty, 10th century BC

拍品描述

Length 11¼ in., 28.5 cm Of ancient form, timeless patina and magnificent casting, the present vessel is among the most important examples of Western Zhou bronzeware to ever come to market. Its balanced form tracing a captivating curve along its back and up the grand trunk, accentuated by the complex swirling roundels of its shoulders, the vessel exudes a sense of silence and awe that feels unknowable yet still striking three millennia on from its creation. Of the small number of archaic bronze vessels fashioned after animals, few are as rare, striking and magnificent as those of elephant form. However, while its open trunk, tusks and grounded form are all undeniably elephantine, the present form is quite distinct from the handful of elephant vessels uncovered in Shang dynasty (ca. 1600 – ca. 1046 BCE) contexts. Compare the famous Camondo Elephant of enormous proportions and uninterrupted surface design, preserved in the Musée Guimet, Paris (accession no. EO 1545) included in Rarities of the Musée Guimet, Asia House Gallery, New York, 1975, cat. no. 55; or the ewer in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington (accession no. F1936.6a-b) illustrated variously including in John Alexander Pope, Rutherford John Gettens, James Cahill and Noel Barnard. The Freer Chinese Bronzes, Washington, 1967, pl. 40. These examples, along with one unearthed from Shixing Mountain, Xianxia commune, Liling City, preserved in the Hunan Museum, illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji, vol. 4, Beijing, 1998, pl. 130 are more clearly Shang in style and surface decoration than the present and – crucially – more elephantine. Only one other closely related zun of this form appears to have emerged in recent history, uncovered from the tomb of Count Yu (ca. 950-900 BC), Tomb 1 at Rujiazhuang, Baoji county, Shaanxi and now preserved in the Baoji Bronzeware Museum, Baoji, illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji, vol. 6, Beijing, 1997, pl. 171 (Fig. 1). This registered National Treasure, officially termed object BRM1乙∶23, was uncovered alongside two bird-shaped bronze zun in an elite funerary context and attributed to the mid-Western Zhou. Slightly larger than the present at 23.6 cm in height and 37.8 cm in length, the elephant shares almost every feature of the present design, from its swirling zoomorphic surface pattern to its upwards reaching trunk, bulging eyes and graceful curving form. Though exceptionally rare today, such elephant zun appear to have once been considered fundamental to the ritual life of the Zhou royal court. As the ancient classic describing the official rituals of the Zhou state, the Zhouli [Rites of Zhou, ca. 3rd century BCE] describes, for the initial offerings of court ceremonies, two such elephant vessels (xiangzun) were to be used by practitioners to consecrate proceedings. One it seems filled with wine, the other with pure foodstuffs, these two royal xiangzun continued to be written about, expounded upon and clarified in other early historical sources, eventually compiled in the three-thousand five-hundred-and-eighty-third chapter of the official Ming Encyclopedia, the Yongle Dadian (1403–1408). The Song dynasty Xuanhe bogutu [Illustrations on a wide ranges of antiques from the Xuanhe reign-period, ca. 1120-1123] similarly takes up the subject of the elephant zun, illustrating an example presumably preserved in the imperial court (Fig. 2). In the view of its compilers, relying on the Confucian Book of Rites (Liji , ca. 3rd century BCE), the elephant zun represented one of the two key zun forms of the period, alongside ‘xizun’ of bovine form. Beyond the present example and the aforementioned Baoji elephant, no other bronze zun of this magnificent form appears to survive. While the dating and descriptions of vessels in early historiographical sources are often questionable, Qing court sources appear to attest to a very small number of comparable examples may have once been preserved in imperial contexts, though none appear to have been published in modern times: one, illustrated in the Examination of Crafts section of the Qinding gujin tushu jicheng [Imperial compendium of ancient and modern books, 1700-1725] closely resembles the aforementioned Bogu tu example. Two other related zun, also with vessels on their backs, are attested among the archaic bronzes preserved in the Qing court of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795) and are similarly attributed to the Zhou dynasty in his Xiqing gujian [Catalogue of Xiqing antiques, 1749–1755] (Fig. 3).

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