Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin with lower melting
point and a higher degree of hardness than those of
copper. When it is cast, bronze has the advantages of
minimum air bubble production and maximum flow quality and
can produce objects with razor-sharp edges or exquisite
decoration, thus making it a suitable material for durable
weapons, tools, and containers. China employed bronze
objects as long as four thousand years ago in the period
of the Lungshan culture and brought the use of bronze
ceremonial vessels to a peak in the Shang and Zhou
dynasties.
The spiritual practices of the Shang dynasty people arose
from the belief that the spirits of ancestors in the
supernatural world were forever in control of Man's
earthly well-being, and it was therefore necessary that
offerings of prayer and food constantly be made to them.
From the evidence of oracle bone inscriptions we know that
not only did the people of the Shang dynasty offer
sacrifices to a wide range of phenomena, but their
ceremonies were varied and complex. The vessels used by
the ruling house and nobility to offer food or wine in
these sacrificial ceremonies were cast of bronze. Their
types were extremely varied; many had their origin in
everyday objects of pottery or wood.
An ancient text records that "the Zhou followed the
rituals of the Shang." Taking the Shang ceremonies as
a base, the Duke of Zhou established a canon of rituals
and music and founded the orthodox hierarchy of social
rank within the feudal clans. Together, these constituted
the system of rites responsible for maintaining social
order. In the performance of rituals, the types and
numbers of vessels employed-whether food, wine, water, or
musical vessels-were functions of the position or rank of
the personage conducting the ceremony. Under the system of
ceremonial procedures, bronze "ritual objects"
were generally referred as "ritual vessels" as a
reflection of this.
Bronze ritual vessels were often cast with extraordinary
kinds of engraved decoration. Whether expressing the
religious aspirations of the Shang people or reflecting
aspects of the lives of the Zhou people in the earthly
realm, they are able to capture for us the spirit of the
times that produced them. It was also customary to cast
inscriptions in bronze ritual vessels to record some
recognition of meritorious achievement, bestowal of
imperial favor, appointment of office, settlement of a
contract, proclamation of a new statute, taking of an
oath, or other such occasion. A distinguishing
characteristic of the bronze collection of the National
Palace Museum is the number of vessels bearing lengthy
inscriptions, such as the Maokung ting, the San p'an, the
Sung hu, the Tsung-chou chung, and the Tzu-fan chime.
Documents on bamboo strips or classics written on silk
from the pre-Han period have been reduced to ashes by the
ravages of time, and only the inscriptions on bronze
vessels have come down to us as one kind of
contemporaneous record of so ancient period of history.
The Shang archaeological excavations at An-yang in Honan
province testify to references by the ancient philosopher
Hsun-tzu to the use of molds in the casting of bronze
implements. These molds were made of pottery, and they
supported the vessels inside and out with a precision that
made possible the most beautiful achievements in bronze
casting. The term "pottery casting" was coined
to emphasize the nature of the "piece-mold
process" in ancient bronze casting.
In western Asia, the Sumerians were already familiar with
the "lost-wax process" for casting bronze
vessels by the middle of the third millennium, B.C. The
bronze age in China may thus be said to have arrived
comparatively late, but the piece-mold process borrowed
from indigenous pottery production methods in the
Neolithic period developed independently.
The bronze vessels that have survived from the Shang and
Zhou dynasties were by no means handed down from
generation to generation right down to the present.
Rather, they emerged at one time or another from the
ancient tombs or storage pits in which they had been
buried. Sometimes topsoil would become eroded after a
heavy rainstorm or washed away by the flow of a river,
forcing the earth to give up its treasures, or perhaps
ancient vessels might have turned up accidentally when
peasants plowing a field or excavating a well uncovered an
ancient tomb. Because a tomb is essentially a storage
place for precious objects, there have been those who have
excavated graves in search of treasure. In fact, ever
since the early Western Zhou dynasty there has never been
a time when grave-robbing was unknown. Of the bronze
vessels of the Shang, Zhou, Ch'in, and Han dynasties that
have emerged from tombs, some have been scattered into the
hands of collectors, where they have been devotedly
maintained, and some have assembled within the inner court
of the imperial palace, where they have been preserved and
cataloged. Part of National Palace Museum's bronze
collection came directly from the Qing dynasty imperial
household collection, and part of it was purchased from
the private collections of Mr. Liu T'i-chih and Mr. Jung
Keng. Of all the items in the collection, none has the
precise record of a scientific archaeological excavation.
Concepts of connoisseurship among people of former times
were different from those of today. Collectors often used
to take the soiled and rusted curios they acquired of the
earth and grind them down or pick out the bits of green
mottled oxidation and cover the outside with wax. These
kind of "doctored" objects are commonly called
sku-k'eng, or "boiled excavated objects," and an
abundance of them is another characteristic of the bronze
collection of this Museum.
Other ancient civilizations of the world, such as Egypt
and Assyria, have left majestic architectural and
sculptural ruins for people to admire, while China's
legacy of ancient greatness is her bronze ritual vessels.
Harmanizing form, decoration, engraving, and inscriptions,
Chinese bronzes surely epitomize the highest level of
technological and artistic expression in ancient times.
They furthermore can be spoken of in socio-political
terms, for it was society and politics that, because of
the bronze ritual vessels played within them, were the
impetus behind the development and evolution of bronze
art.
( extracted
from exhibition catalogue of National Palace Museum
)
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