Inlaid red copper frog animal pattern plate

This pan (water basin) is bronze, the metal of Chinese ritual, cast in piece-moulds so the Imperial workshop could repeat a shape the ancestors would recognise. Bronze was read before it was touched.

The surface is the message. Bronze patterns, the taotie mask above all, were meant to be legible to the initiated and uncanny to everyone else.

Bronze was the voice of early Chinese ritual, vessels cast to hold grain and wine for the ancestors and for the state.

A pan (water basin) like this survived because bronze does, and because someone thought the rite worth keeping. The bronze still rings, if you know how to listen.

Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.