Chinese ritual bronzes


From, elaborately decorated bronze vessels were deposited as grave goods in the tombs of royalty and nobility during the Chinese Bronze Age. Documented excavations have found over 200 pieces in a single royal tomb. They were produced for an individual or social group to use in making ritual offerings of food and drink to his or their ancestors and other deities or spirits. Such ceremonies generally took place in family temples or ceremonial halls over tombs. These ceremonies can be seen as ritual banquets in which both living and dead members of a family were supposed to participate. Details of these ritual ceremonies are preserved through early literary records. On the death of the owner of a ritual bronze, it would often be placed in his tomb, so that he could continue to pay his respects in the afterlife; other examples were cast specifically as grave goods. Indeed, many surviving examples have been excavated from graves.
The bronzes were likely not used for normal eating and drinking; they represent larger, more elaborate versions of the types of vessels used for this, and made in precious materials. Many of the shapes also survive in pottery, and pottery versions continued to be made in an antiquarian spirit until modern times. Apart from table vessels, weapons and some other objects were made in special ritual forms. Another class of ritual objects are those, also including weapons, made in jade, which was probably the most highly valued of all, and which had been long used for ritual tools and weapons, since.
At least initially, the production of bronze was probably controlled by the ruler, who gave unformed metal to his nobility as a sign of favour. The technology of bronze production was described in the Kao Gong Ji, compiled some time between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC.

Use

Bronzes are some of the most important pieces of ancient Chinese art, warranting an entire separate catalogue in the Imperial art collections. The Chinese Bronze Age began in the Xia dynasty, and bronze ritual containers form the bulk of collections of Chinese antiquities, reaching its zenith during the Shang dynasty and the early part of the Zhou dynasty.
The majority of surviving Chinese ancient bronze artefacts are ritual forms rather than their equivalents made for practical use, either as tools or weapons. Weapons like daggers and axes had a sacrificial meaning, symbolizing the heavenly power of the ruler. The strong religious associations of bronze objects brought up a great number of vessel types and shapes which became regarded as classic and totemic and were copied, often in other media such as Chinese porcelain, throughout subsequent periods of Chinese art.
The ritual books of old China minutely describe who was allowed to use what kinds of sacrificial vessels and how much. The king of Zhou used 9 dings and 8 gui vessels, a duke was allowed to use 7 dings and 6 guis, a baron could use 5 dings and 3 guis, a nobleman was allowed to use 3 dings and 2 guis. Turning to actual archaeological finds, the tomb of Fu Hao, an unusually powerful Shang queen, contained her set of ritual vessels, numbering over two hundred, which are also far larger than the twenty-four vessels in the tomb of a contemporary nobleman. Her higher status would have been clear not only to her contemporaries, but also, it was believed, to her ancestors and other spirits. Many of the pieces were cast with inscriptions using the posthumous form of her name, indicating they were made especially for burial in the tomb.

Metallurgy and origin

The origin of the ores or metals used for Shang and other early Chinese bronze is a current topic of research. As with other early civilisations, Shang settlement was centered on river valleys, and driven in part by the introduction of intensive agriculture. In China such areas lacked ore deposits and required the import of metallurgical material. Typical Shang period bronzes contain over 2% lead, unlike contemporary coppers of the Eurasian Steppe. Pre-Shang bronzes do not contain the radiogenic lead isotopes. Scholars have sought to determine the source of the ores been based on lead content and trace isotope analysis. In the case of Shang period bronzes, various sites, from early to late Shang period, numerous samples of the bronze alloy are characterized by high radiogenic lead isotope content, unlike most known native Chinese lead ores. Potential sources of the ore include Qinling, middle to lower Yangtze area, and south-west China; the possibility that ore or metal was imported from Africa in this period has been proposed, based on potential isotopic matches, but challenged and rejected by other researchers.
The pattern of metal circulation revealed by the existence of highly radiogenic lead remains controversial, partly because radiogenic lead sources may not be as rare in China as initially thought but also because different lead isotope signatures do not necessarily signify different geographical locations, but pockets of radiogenic lead in the same common lead deposit. A recent compositional analysis has proposed that the metals used to manufacture the Chinese ritual bronzes derived from mining progressively deeper ores in deposits close to where many of these bronzes were unearthed, and calls into question interpretations of social, cultural and technological change during the Chinese Bronze Age predicated on the acquisition of metals from disparate regions. However, it is likely that the earliest tin deposits were alluvial and perhaps exploited by the same methods used for panning gold in placer deposits.
The bronzes typically contain between 5% and 30% tin and between 2% and 3% lead.

Casting technology

Piece-mould casting

From the Bronze Age to the Han dynasty, the main technique used in ancient China to cast ritual vessels, weapons and other utensils was the piece-mould casting. In the piece-mould process, a section mould can be formed in two ways. First, a clay mould is formed around the model of the object to be cast and then removed in sections. In the second approach, no model is required. Instead, create a mould inside a clay-lined container and stamp it with the desired finish. In both methods, mould parts are fired and then reassembled. Clay castings are then made, and parts removed. The resulting clay casting looks like a finished product, is allowed to dry, and then filed flat to form a core. This establishes the casting space, which determines the thickness of the finished product. The parts are then reassembled around the core, and the parts are cast. The clay moulds are then broken up, and the finished castings are removed and polished with abrasives to obtain a shiny finish. The number of parts the mould is cut into depends entirely on the shape and design of the object to be cast.

Casting-on

Casting is an ancient Chinese casting technique used to attach prefabricated handles and other small accessories to larger bronze objects. This technique has been in use as early as the Bronze Age, first in the South and then in the Shanghe region of the Central Plains. The importance of casting in the manufacture of personal ornaments is that it is used to create the connecting bronze chains.

Lost-wax casting

The earliest archaeological evidence of lost wax casting in China was found in the 6th century BC, at the cemetery of Chu in Xichuan, Henan province. Bronze Jin, cast using traditional piece-mould techniques, is further embellished by adding prefabricated ornate open worked handles, which are produced through a lost wax process and then attached. Lost wax was eventually introduced to China from the ancient Near East as far west as possible, and the process has an early and long history in the region, but exactly when and how it was introduced is unclear. The dewaxing process is more suitable for casting decorations with deep undercuts and openwork designs than the moulding process, which complicates the removal of moulded parts from the model. Although lost-wax casting was never used to make large vessels, it became more and more popular between the late Eastern Zhou and Han dynasties. The lost-wax casting process for casting small parts was more economical than the mould-making process because the amount of metal used was easier to control.
In the lost wax process, the object to be cast is first modeled. Wax, which is easy to shape and carve and which melts away under the proper conditions, has been the most commonly used material for this purpose since antiquity. The wax model is then coated with clay to form the mould. The first coat of clay is usually carefully brushed to prevent trapping of air bubbles; subsequent coats may be rougher. Then, the clay is fired and the wax melts. Molten metal is then poured into the clay mould to replace the burnt wax model. After the metal cools, the fired-clay model is opened to reveal the finished product. The resulting cast object is a metal replica of the original wax model.

Classification of pieces in the Imperial collection

The appreciation, creation and collection of Chinese bronzes as pieces of art and not as ritual items began in the Song dynasty and reached its zenith in the Qing dynasty during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, whose massive collection is recorded in the catalogues known as the Xiqing gujian and the Xiqing jijian. Within those two catalogues, the bronzeware is categorized according to use:
  • Sacrificial vessels,
  • Wine vessels,
  • Food vessels,
  • Water vessels,
  • Musical instruments,
  • Weapons,
  • Measuring containers,
  • Ancient money, and
  • Miscellaneous.
The most highly prized are generally the sacrificial and wine vessels, which form the majority of most collections. Often these vessels are elaborately decorated with taotie designs.

Sacrificial vessels

  • Sacrificial vessel, originally a cauldron for cooking and storing meat. The Shang prototype has a round bowl, wider than it is tall, set on three legs ; there are two short handles on each side. Later examples became larger and larger and were considered a measure of power. It is considered the single most important class of Chinese bronzeware in terms of its cultural importance. There is a variation called a which has a square bowl and four legs at each corner. There exist rare forms with lids. 西清古鑒 contains over two hundred examples, and this is the most highly regarded of all Chinese bronzes.
  • : Sacrificial vessel that was originally a food vessel. Flat, covered bowl on a long stem.
  • : Rectangular dish, triangular in vertical cross-section. Always with a lid shaped like the dish.
  • Zun| : Wine vessel and sacrificial vessel. Tall cylindrical wine cup, with no handles or legs. The mouth is usually slightly broader than the body. In the late dynasty, this type of vessel became exceedingly elaborate, often taking the shape of animals and abandoning the traditional shape. These later types are distinguished from gōng by retaining a small, roughly circular mouth. This type of vessel forms the second largest group of objects in the Xiqing gujian, after the .
  • : Flat rectangular platform with square legs at each corner. Not represented in the Xiqing gujian.
  • : Sacrificial vessel. Two forms: A. Large squat round pot with two handles; B. Tall box-like container, the base narrower than the mouth with a roof-like lid. Later became a generic name for all sacrificial vessels.