The three-legged bronze tripod with cicada pattern

The bronze tripods of the Shang Dynasty are known for their heavy and mysterious shapes, and rarely have a light and lively feeling. Although this bronze tripod with cicada pattern is still thick and heavy, it is small in shape, 22 cm high and 18 cm in diameter. Its decorative style also reveals a strong atmosphere of real life. This allows us to glimpse another level of the aesthetic psychology of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

The cicada pattern plays a certain decorative role on bronze ware and is one of the important patterns of bronze ware. Guo Pu of the Jin Dynasty wrote in "Cicada Praise": "Among the clean insects, the cicada is the most precious. It sheds its skin and discards its filth, and drinks the dew and is always fresh." This means that the cicada has the nature of coming out of filth without being stained, and sucking the morning dew to be clean. It can be seen that the cicada pattern is widely used in bronze decoration, which may represent the meaning of clean diet. The Shang and Zhou dynasties were an era of relatively developed civilization. Food hygiene has attracted people's attention as a major event during this period, especially the upper aristocratic class. During this period, some bronze vessels, such as tripods, jue, goblets, and plates, were cast with cicada patterns. Most of the cicada bodies were in the shape of a drooping leaf triangle, with segmented stripes on the abdomen, no feet, similar to a pupa, and cloud-thunder patterns filled around; there were also long cicada patterns with feet, and cloud-thunder patterns were also used as the ground pattern.

Looking at this three-legged bronze tripod with cicada patterns, the overall shape is round, with two upright thick ears symmetrically cast on the straight mouth, and three evenly distributed column-shaped feet under the plump abdomen, reflecting the general style of thick and stable bronze vessels in the Shang Dynasty. Above the belly of the tripod, a strip of Kuilong decoration is cast strikingly, and the motif is a very realistic and lifelike cicada. The cicadas are arranged horizontally and continuously in the same direction, with a proper thickness of lines and a proper degree of complexity and simplicity. The bottom of the cicada pattern is an inverted triangle pattern belt composed of thunder patterns. The whole pattern is properly dense and has clear layers. The pattern is decorated with several cicada patterns connected together, which is what later generations called "continuous connection". There is also the word "Chan Yan", which also means to be passed down from one generation to another. The "Chan Lian" pattern is cast in a prominent position on the copper tripod as a treasure, which probably reflects the owner's hope that a stable and wealthy life can be passed down from generation to generation.