An Archaic Bronze ‘Taotie’ Wine Vessel, Gu, Late Shang Dynasty, 1600-1046 B.C.

Lot 3102. An Archaic Bronze ‘Taotie’ Wine Vessel, Gu, Late Shang Dynasty, 1600-1046 B.C. H 27.7cm. Estimate HKD 600,000 - 800,000 (USD 76,571 - 102,095). Sold price HKD 944,000 (USD 120,472). © Poly Auction.

The slender middle section rising from a flaring foot to a trumpet neck, crisply cast around the central bulb with stylised taotie masks centred and divided by notched flanges, the neck with four upright triangular blades decorated with dissolved taotie masks in relief against a leiwen ground above a band of angular serpents, the foot similarly decorated with taotie masks and cicadas in relief against a leiwen ground, with two bowstrings and two crosses dividing the waist and foot, the bronze with an attractive olive patina with malachite encrustations, the base with an inscription reading Chang.

Literature: The Essence of the Royal China, 2004, The Osaka Bijutsu Club, pl.8.

Note: This Gu was well designed, engraved and densely embossed from the ground, which was a typical feature of the last stage of the YinXu, the serpentine pattern near the abdomen and the crepe of the foot near the abdomen were prevailing in the late Shang Dynasty. The symmetrical arrangement was a typical way of decoration during the middle and late Shang Dynasty. An examples is the Gu excavated in 2001 from Huanzhuang Village, Anyang, Henan Province, published in New Unearthed Bronze of YinXu, Kunming, 2008, pl. 62. Another example is the bronze Gu collected by Arthur M. Sackler, published in Robert W. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collection, Washington, 1987, pl. 38. One more example is bronze Gu unearthed from the M1 tomb, Lingshi, Shanxi in 1985, published in Tombs in Lingshi from Shang Dynasty, Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Beijing, Science Press, 2006, pp. 62-63, pl. 68-70.