Chinese bronzes

Chinese bronzes, any of a number of bronze objects that were cast in China beginning before 1500 bce.

Bronze gu Bronze gu from Anyang, Henan province, China, Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 bce); in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo. 

Bronzes have been cast in China for about 3,700 years. Most bronzes of about 1500–300 bce, roughly the Bronze Age in China, may be described as ritual vessels intended for the worship of ancestors, who are often named in inscriptions on the bronzes. Many were specially cast to commemorate important events in the lives of their possessors. These ritual vessels of ancient China represent possibly the most remarkable achievement in the whole history of metalcraft before modern times.

The Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 bce)

Bronze jia, Shang dynasty (18th–12th century bce); in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri.

The earliest examples of bronze vessels were unearthed in Erlitou, near the modern city of Luoyang in Henan province, which may or may not represent the earliest named Shang capital, Po, if not a still earlier Xia dynasty site. There a “palace” with pounded-earth foundation, fine jades, simple bronze vessels, and oracle bones were found. At Erligang, in the Zhengzhou area in Henan province, traces have been found of a walled city that may have been the middle Shang capital referred to as Ao.

The Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bce)

Zhou dynasty: ceremonial bronze jianCeremonial bronze jian, Dong (Eastern) Zhou dynasty (770–256 bce); in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The ritual bronzes of the early Western Zhou (Xizhou) continued the late Anyang tradition; many were made by the same craftsmen and by their descendants. Even in the predynastic Zhou period, however, new creatures had appeared on the bronzes, notably a flamboyant long-tailed bird that may have had totemic meaning for the Zhou rulers, and flanges had begun to be large and spiky. By the end of the 9th century, moreover, certain Shang shapes such as the jue, gu, and gong were no longer being made, and the taotie and other Shang zoomorphs had been broken up and then dissolved into volutes or undulating meander patterns encircling the entire vessel, scales, and fluting, with little apparent symbolic intent.

Zhou dynasty zhongChinese bronze zhong, late Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bce); in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Height 67 cm.

Zhou dynasty: ceremonial bronze gui Ceremonial bronze gui, late 11th–early 10th century bce, Zhou dynasty; in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

 

The Qin (221–206 bce) and Han dynasties (206 bce–220 ce)

Already by late Zhou times, the more expensive medium of lacquer was often used in place of bronze. Nevertheless, some bronze vessels were still made for sacrificial rites, and other bronze objects, such as lamps and incense burners, also were made for household use. The “hill censer” (boshan xianglu) was designed as a miniature, three-dimensional mountain of the immortals, usually replete with scenes of mythic combat between man and beasts, suggesting the powerful forces of nature that only the Daoist adept could tame. Sacred vapours emanating from materials burned within were released through perforations in the lid (hidden behind the mountain peaks). Cosmic waters were depicted lapping at the base of the hills, conveying the sense of an island, and the whole was set on a narrow stem that thrust the mountain upward as if it were an axis of the universe. Such censers might have been used in ceremonial exorcisms, in funerary rites associated with the ascent of the soul, or in other varieties of Daoist religious practice.