The Fu Yi Gui, Late Shang dynasty

Japanese Private Collection.

Bo shishaku-ke Bo tai-ke shozohin nyusatsu [The auction from the collections of a viscount family and an established family], Tokyo Art Club, Tokyo, 8th April 1918, lot 94.

Collection of Shinwata Hirotaro.

The present bronze belongs to a small and distinctive group of gui vessels characterized by their unusually deep bowls, closely resembling the form of contemporary bronze yu. Vessels of this type first appeared in the Shang dynasty and continued to be produced into the early Western Zhou dynasty. Comparable examples include a late Shang dynasty Tian Gui of simpler design, excavated in 1969 in Changwu County, Shaanxi Province, now preserved in the Xianyang City Cultural Relics Bureau, and published in Wu Zhenfeng, Shangzhou qingtongqi mingwen ji tuxiang jicheng [Compendium of Inscriptions and Images of Bronzes from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties], vol. 7, Shanghai, 2012, no. 03402. Another related vessel, formerly in the collection of Anthony Hardy and previously handled by major dealers including C.T. Loo, J.T. Tai, and Eskenazi, was sold most recently at Christie’s New York, 16th September 2010, lot 845.

For an early Western Zhou dynasty example of this type, see a Bing Gui, excavated in Maqiao village, Xi'an city in 1959, currently in the Shaanxi History Museum, illustrated in Wu Zhenfeng, op. cit., no. 03507.