A rhinoceros stands with its head down and its hide worked in gold and silver cloud scrolls, a real animal turned into a wine vessel by people who had seen one. The Western Han cast this zun as a study from life: the body is heavy, the inlay is fine, and the whole thing reads
Bronze Rhinoceros Zun with Gold and Silver Inlay Read More »
A slender tripod cup on blade-thin legs, the oldest bronze vessel shape China has, and the moment drinking became a ritual instead of a reflex. The jue belongs to the Erlitou culture, the early Bronze Age society some identify with the Xia, and it shows casting at its first confident step: a spout, a tail,
Bronze Jue with Nipple Motifs Read More »
A bronze basin the length of a child, made to hold water at the ritual bath and to record a cavalry raid that went very well. Lord Bai of Guo had the victory cast into a 111-character inscription: he cut down five hundred foes and took their horses, and the Zhou king rewarded him for
Guo Ji Zi Bai Basin Read More »
An unremarkable pot from the outside, and a 499-character letter from a king to his minister on the inside: the longest inscription ever found on a Chinese bronze. King Xuan of Zhou gave Maogong a charge and a vessel to remember it by, spelling out duties, warnings, and gifts in a single breath of archaic
Maogong Ding (Maogong Tripod) Read More »
A bronze basin whose inside is covered with a contract: two states, a disputed border, and the witnesses who guaranteed the deal three thousand years before international law had a name. The San Family Plate records a land settlement between the states of San and Ji, inscribed in dense clerical script that scholars still decode
San Family Plate (San Shi Pan) Read More »
A cooking tripod whose handles are two rams’ heads and whose surface is crowded with small beasts, as if the Bronze Age wanted its utensils to bite back. The Boju li is named for an official, Boju, named in its long inscription, and dated to the early Western Zhou. It is the showpiece of the
Boju Ritual Tripod (Li) Read More »
On New Year’s Eve the emperor poured wine into a small gold cup and drank to a kingdom with no cracks, and the cup was built to say so. The ‘Gold Ombilical Cup’ was made to a strict specification: gold body, inlaid with pearls and precious stones, its feet shaped as elephants to signal stability.
Gold Cup of Perpetual Unity Read More »
A mountain of jade the height of a man, carved all over with tiny figures hauling earth and channelling water: the Emperor Yu taming the flood, rendered at the scale of the flood itself. The block was a single piece of Hetian jade, dragged from Xinjiang and carved in Yangzhou over the better part of
Jade Mountain of Yu the Great Taming the Flood Read More »
After snow, a clear sky, and a note to a friend: Wang Xizhi says he is well and hopes the same of you. Twenty-eight characters carry the mood of a quiet afternoon seventeen centuries gone. The original is lost; what survives is a Tang-dynasty tracing that the Qianlong emperor treasured above almost everything else, inscribing
Timely Clearing After Snowfall (Kuai Xue Shi Qing Tie) Read More »
A short letter to a cousin who has gone away, written with the calm of someone who assumes the paper will outlast both of them. Wang Xun was a grandson of the great Wang family of the Eastern Jin, and his letter is the only surviving calligraphy from that circle that scholars trust as genuine.
Boyuan Letter (Boyuan Tie) Read More »
