Bronze Gui with Horse Design

Western Zhou (1046—71BC)

Height: 30.6cm; Base Length: 20cm

Excavated from Jinquan Village, Lianhe Chong, Taojiang County

Gui is a kind of food container used in sacrificial ceremony. 

This Bronze Gui comprises a bulged belly, a thin waist under the belly and a square base at the bottom. Four horses, with horse bodies in plain and high relief and horse heads in three-dimensional relief, are decorated at the shoulder. The Loong (a magical animal in Chinese myth) patterns with two bodies are decorated between the above small horses. The horse heads had been lost when it was excavated and the forward-looking posture what we see now is the reconstruction according to the remaining parts such as the horse bodies and necks. 

The belly is decorated with two groups of animal face patterns and four phoenixes. Two handles must have been arranged on the two sides, which had been lost. At the base, horse heads stretch out from four corners. Two longer sides of the square are decorated with the horse body relief and the other two shorter sides with animal face patterns. What deserves our attentions in the casting aspects is that the patterns on the bronze surface are protruding and the inner surface thereby concave, giving rise to the basically even thickness of the bronze body.