Description Hu Archaic Ritual Libation Vessel
Cast bronze, more grainy green, bluish, gray patina and also earth-colored sinterings, made of stretched remains of the original gilding (in the auction catalogue of Sotheby’s London as overcleaned denotes. Possibly an old(?) repair under stronger incrustation outside at the shoulder of the reveal
Height appx. 395 mm, diameter appx. 180 mm
Western Han period, 206 BC - 8 AD.
Provenance: Sotheby’s London 1994, from an old English private collection, private collection Austria
This bottle-shaped Hu, characteristic of the Han period, with a long, cylindrical spout thickened to a garlic bulb shape at the end, belongs to a group of ritual vessels that have only become popular in recent years.
In older books on archaic bronze, such as Bernhard Karlgren, Catalogue of the Nathanael Wessén Collection, Stockholm 1969 or Christian Deydier, Chinese Bronzes, New York 1980, this form is not mentioned. Garlic (suan) has been considered in China since ancient times as the most effective defense against the five poisons (snake, scorpion, centipede, lizard or gecko and toad) and as a lucky plant, symbol of numerous descendants and of great importance in the ritual of the festival on the fifth day of the fifth month around the time of the summer solstice.
The best comparison piece for this type of vessel is in: Jessica Rawson/Emma Bunker, Ancient Chinese and Ordos Bronzes, Hong Kong 1990, on p. 53, Fig. 46. There it is claimed that this remarkable vessel shape was first used in Shaanxi and may have originally come from Western China. Compared to the most important older types of vessels, however, this is a vessel of na?ve simplicity. This naive simplicity seems to have been adopted voluntarily when the Qin conquered central China and imported this type of vessel from the provinces of Henan and Hubei.
Further comparative pieces can be found in: Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji, The Complete Collection of Chinese Bronzes, Beijing 1998, Vol. 12, No. 3, p. 3 and No. 6 and 7, p. 6 and 7 and Yoshikawa Kobukan, Shunju Sengoku Jidai Seiki No Konkyu, 1989, p. 111.
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