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13 ? in. (35 cm.) high
Kochukyo, Tokyo. Bella and P. P. Chiu Collection, Hong Kong and San Francisco, by 1988.Eskenazi Ltd., London, 1995.
Heralding a New Era: A Rare and Important Pair of Western Zhou Gui VesselsExceptionally rare, this pair of bronze lidded gui food-serving vessels is art-historically important for its reliance solely on vertical ribs as decoration, thereby introducing a new mode of embellishment; the ribbed décor, combined with the elevation of the vessel bowl on a tall, square base, signals the final break with the stylistic legacy of the previous Shang dynasty and the establishment of a distinctive Zhou-dynasty mode. As such, the pair joins a small group of other socled gui vessels with rib décor produced in the Middle Western Zhou period (c. 975–c. 875 BC), in the late tenth or early ninth century BC. That these majestic vessels not only have survived for nearly three thousand years but have remained together as a pair signals their extraordinary importance and elevates them to the status of revered treasures. Apart from their art-historical importance, these gui vessels also have a very distinguished provenance, having passed through the hands of esteemed art dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi, London, and then through the acclaimed collection of Bella and P.P. Chiu (of Hong Kong and San Francisco).In essence, large ceremonial vessels for serving cooked millet, sorghum, rice, or other grains, these virtually identical bronze gui vessels comprise a circular bowl set on a tall, square socle, or base. With its S-curved profile, the bowl, or container portion of the vessel, has a lightly flaring lip that thickens at its outer edge, a constricted vertical neck, and a deep compressed globular bowl set on a splayed, circular footring enhanced by a single, molded bowstring line. Integrally cast with the bowl, the hollow, square socle elevates and supports the bowl. Two opposed, squared, loop handles spring laterally from the bowl’s neck and then immediately curve upward to rise vertically, reaching nearly to the top of the cover. Each lightly domed cover has a wide, circular handle with thickened lip, the handle’s form sometimes characterized as a band-collar or clerical-collar; the handle’s well-articulated, horizontal lip echoes the undecorated horizontal bands that border the vessel’s decorative registers, separating one register from the next. An all-over pattern of vertical ribs enlivens the bowls, covers, and socles. The ribs on the bowls appear in two registers, with a taller register on the bulging belly and a shorter register on the constricted neck; a single, broad band of ribs encircles the cover, and a single, wide register embellishes each face of the square socles. The plain bands that border each area of ribs impose a well-defined order on the decorative scheme and, through visual and textural contrast, invigorate the design. A pair of vertically set, hollow, tubular appendages, each divided into three sections, enlivens the neck of each bowl, each opposed appendage appearing a quarter rotation from the handles. Eight small, square openings appear on each face of the socle; set within a rectangular panel at the center of the lower half of the wall, the openings are arranged in two horizontal rows of four openings each, one row atop the other. The rectangular panels intended to receive the perforations were left unembellished during casting and thus lack vertical ribs.Bronze casting came fully into its own in China during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 BC–c. 1046 BC) with the production of sacral vessels intended for use in funerary ceremonies. Those vessels include ones for food and wine as well as ones for water; those for food and wine, the types most frequently encountered, group themselves into storage and presentation vessels as well as heating, cooking, and serving vessels. A sacral vessel f