Chinese Bronzes - Ritual Bronze Vessels
Technical features
In every culture, bronze was the first alloyed metal to
be used for every kind of article necessary for daily
life like ploughshares, yokes, kettles, knifes,
bracelets, earrings, chariot axles and so on. The melting
point of unalloyed copper is a bit lower than that of
bronze but it is not able to sustain hard requirements.
Only alloying it with at least 5 percent of tin, the
metal has the needed durability. In China the oldest
bronze findings are 3200 years old.
Culture
In the west of the Eurasian continent, bronze items were
in most cases used for agriculture and warfare. In China,
the greatest part of discovered and preserved bronze items was not forged to
ploughs or swords but cast to sacrificial vessels. Even a
great part of weapons had a sacrificial meaning like
daggers and axes that symbolized the heavenly power of
the ruler. The strong religious sense of bronze objects
brought up a great number of vessel types and shapes
which became so typically that they should be copied as
archaic style receptacles with other materials like wood,
jade, ivory or even gold until the 20th century. The
first researches about Shang 商 and Zhou 周
vessels were made in Song times 宋 when every type got a scientific name. Until then, some
types did not even have a fixed name or were alloted to
different categories, like ding 鼎
and li 鬲. The different types
were used for three purposes: as vessels containing
millet wine, vessels containing food or vessels
containing water. Some vessels with their long feet made
it possible to cook the food inside, making a fire of
charcoal under the vessel. Some types were standing in a
charcoal basin, especially wine containers. The ritual
books of old China minutely describe who was allowed
to use what kinds of sacrificial vessels and how much.
The king of Zhou was favoured to use 9 dings and
8 gui 簋 vessels, a duke (zhuhou 諸侯: gong 公) was allowed to use 7 dings and 6 guis, a baron (daifu 大夫)
could use 5 dings and 3 guis, a nobleman (shi 士) was allowed to use 3 dings and 2 guis.
We can see that the vessel types were composed to sets
including the most important types for offering in a
sacrifice, often using the vessel types of ding, gui, dou 豆, hu 壺, pan 盤
and yi 匜 or he 盉.
The cultural significance of the bronze vessels is also
evident through the abundance of Chinese characters used
for these types. The character dou 豆
, in later Chinese meaning
"bean" or "pea" originally meant a
sometimes covered round one-footed vessel type. The character feng 豊 today is only used
phonetically, but it depicts a vessel, that is filled
with precious jade stones, later reshaped to the character feng 豐, today meaning "rich,
abundant".
Decoration and Inscriptions
Already the earliest types show the typical Taotie pattern 饕餮 that is said to depict
a voracious monster or dragon. The newer types of Taotie pattern
make it more understandable as a forerunner of the more
slim and friendly dragons (panchi 蟠螭) of chinese pictorial art. Other
typical characteristics of the bronze vessels are the two
button-like attachments on the rim of the vessels (zhu 柱), the nipple-nail pattern (ruding 乳錠) and the three legs.
The first inscriptions of the bronze vessels are clan insignia (zuhui 族徽)
or simply names of persons. From the Western Zhou time on, bronze vessels bear
inscriptions of enfeoffment,
memorials or instructions. See a translated example of the Mao Gong Ding 毛公鼎 kettle.
Historical Periods: [Neolithic age] [Erlitou] [Erligang] [Shang] [Western Zhou] [Mao Gong Ding 毛公鼎 and the Da Yu Ding 大盂鼎. The long inscriptions inside these vessels are often reports of an enfeoffment.
Types :
[Bei] [Beizhu] [Bi and Shao] [Bu] [Ding] [Dou] [Dui] [Erbei] [Fu] [Fu (kettle)] [Fou] [Gong] [Gu] [Guan] [Gui] [He] [Hu] [Jia] [Jian] [Jin] [Jue] [Lei] [Li] [Ling] [Pan] [Taotie] [Xu] [Yan] [Yi] [Yi (Fangyi)] [You] [Yu] [Zhi] [Zu] [Zun] [Zuhui]