A very rare archaic bronze linchpin, Western Zhou dynasty

Collection of Stephen Junkunc, III (d. 1978).

Bronze linchpins made in the form of a rhinoceros head are very rare. See a pair of nearly identical linchpins in the collection of Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, illustrated together with their axle caps in Ancient Chinese Arts in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1989, pl. 99, together with a few other examples of different animal forms, such as boar, elephant, and tiger, pls 91-93; one in the British Museum, London, illustrated in William Watson, Handbook of the Collections of Early Chinese Antiquities, London, 1962, pl. 36; and another, modeled with a single horn, published in Orvar Karlbeck, 'Notes on Some Chinese Wheel Axle-Caps', Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 39, Stockholm, 1967, pl. 16, fig. E.