Xuande style copper fumigator

This object is bronze, the metal of Chinese ritual, cast in piece-moulds so the 宣德 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 object 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.