CHINAEUROPE AFRICAASIA 中文双语Français
Culture\Tops News

Chinese bronze vessels to be stars of Christie's sale

By Lin Qi | China Daily | Updated: 2017-03-14 07:33

Chinese bronze vessels to be stars of Christie's sale

Bronze ritual vessels and 13th-century painting Six Dragons will be put under the hammer in New York. [Photo/China Daily]

Four 3,000-year-old Chinese bronze ritual vessels are among 31 Chinese works of art to be auctioned at a New York sale on Wednesday night.

The items to be sold by Christie's are from the collection of the Osaka-based Fujita Museum, which was founded in 1954 to display the collection of Japanese entrepreneur Denzaburo Fujita (1841-1912) and his sons.

The four vessels, each with a presale estimate surpassing $4 million, were used as wine containers during ceremonies in the late Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century BC). They are seen as examples of refined bronze-working skills, and three of them are believed to have been excavated in the city of Anyang, in Henan province.

A square fangzun vessel features mythical creatures on its four shoulders. They look like birds that have hooked beaks, wings and curled tails, while notably, they each wear a horned monster mask. Hybrids combining the features of imagined and real animals like this were a common way for the Shang people to create motifs on bronze objects.

Previous Page 1 2 3 4 Next Page

BACK TO THE TOP
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US