An archaic bronze ritual food vessel (Liding), Late Shang / Western Zhou dynasty

Belgian Private Collection.

Acquired in Belgium, circa 1960.

The present liding represents a grand and imposing example of ritual vessels from the transition between the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties. With prominent taotie masks covering its lobed body – featuring protruding eyes, rounded nostrils and curled horns and fangs – the present vessel epitomizes the zenith of the early representational style before the gradual move to abstraction in the ensuing centuries. 

Particularly notable in the present design are the two layers of scrolling C- and S-shapes horns rising from pairs of elongated eyes. This design variation is extremely rare with only one other closely related vessel apparently attested, reproduced in Bernhard Karlgren, ‘New Studies on Chinese Bronzes’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 9, Stockholm, 1937, pl. VIII, no. 202. For other related liding of this period, compare the Ya Yu Ding, excavated in 1984 from tomb M1713 in Anyang, Henan, recorded in the Institute of Archaeology CASS, Yinxu xin chutu qingtongqi [Ritual bronzes recently excavated in Yinxu], Beijing, 2008, pl. 196; and four similarly decorated lobed vessels, illustrated in Robert Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Cambridge, 1987, nos 93-95.