Late Shang Dynasty Bronze Human Face Cup (盉音同 "禾")
The Freer Museum of Art in the United States is famous for its precious and rare East Asian cultural relics, of which China and Japan have the largest collections. The founder of the museum, Freell, was fascinated by the fascinating and distant Chinese culture, so he obtained many ancient Chinese treasures through various channels. There are nearly 30,000 cultural relics in the collection here, and more than 1,200 ancient Chinese paintings, the largest in the United States.
Today I want to introduce you to a very rare and strange Chinese Shang Dynasty bronze in the Freer Art Museum - the human face cup (he two sounds)! It has an exaggerated and eerie face that bears a striking resemblance to the monster Shrek...
How did Chinese stuff end up in American museums? This matter has to start from the Qing Dynasty, there is a famous figure in the Qing Dynasty called Wang Yirong, you may not have any impression of this name, but when it comes to his achievements, you must know. He was the first person in China to discover the oracle bone, and when he was drinking medicine, he accidentally found this text in the slag of the medicine.
There was a herb called "dragon bone" in his prescription, which was actually an old turtle shell, but at that time Wang Yirong did not know what it was, only to see that this so-called keel was densely engraved with some symbols, and Wang Yirong, as a calligrapher, was sensitive to the fact that this was a kind of writing. With an excited mood, Wang Yirong went to the pharmacy to buy all the keels back, but after checking the ancient texts, he did not find what text this was, so where did this keel come from, and after some exploration, he found that it was originally from the ancient tomb.
It was this discovery that the first ancient tomb of the Shang Dynasty on the mainland, Yin Ruins, finally met with the world, and it was this major discovery that Wang Yirong studied that this was a text from the Shang Dynasty, because it was engraved on the tortoiseshell, so Wang Yirong named this script "Oracle Bone". But unfortunately, this oracle bone was dug out of the tomb, who dug it? Of course, it was dug by tomb robbers, so this ancient tomb has long been destroyed by a thousand holes, which is really painful. According to the recollection of Jia Yubo, an expert in bronze restoration in Beijing, this human-faced dragon pattern cup was unearthed from Yin Ruins and restored by him to become a masterpiece.
Jia Wenzhong recalled that the oral account was that It was Sold to the United States by Shanghai antique merchant Ye Shuzhong during the Republic of China era.
In the bronze restoration industry, the Jia family is like thunder, and Li Xueqin, Qi Gong, and Rong Baozhai have praised it.
The bronzes restored by the Jia family must be kept in photos for archiving, including this human-faced dragon pattern.
Untimmed pre-repaired [Human Face Dragon Pattern]
The pattern after the trimming is very clear.
This "盉" is the name of a kind of wine vessel, which caused quite a stir when it came out, because of its exaggerated shape and exquisite craftsmanship, it was loved by many collectors, and later an antique shop called "Tongyiheng" in Beijing took it away at a high price. Turning around, he sold to a man named Ye Shuzhong, who was a lifelong enemy of Chinese cultural relics and a representative of Lu Wu's company, which was a notorious cultural relics sales company at that time, and many national treasures were scattered overseas, all because of them. It was this company that sold this rare "bronze human face cup" to the United States, and in this way, this national treasure, through the hands of a Chinese, was placed on the other side of the ocean, in the museum of the Americans. Later, the image of the famous American animated film "Shrek" was most likely referenced from this artifact.
In the past century, dozens of excavations have been carried out in Yin Ruins, but no artifacts similar to the human face cup have been found. This special vessel, exquisite ornamentation and extremely strange design style of the human face cup has become a unique national treasure in the Chinese bronze cultural relics family.
The human face fangzun unearthed in Hunan
Cup, water vessel or cocktail shaker. Appeared earlier, equivalent to the Xia Dynasty Erlitou site excavated pottery cups, the Shang Zhou is the most, the most fine products, after the Qin and Han Dynasties. The cup is generally a large abdomen, with a tubular stream growing obliquely on one side of the abdomen, and a hook on the other side, three or four feet, with a lid, and the lid is mostly connected to the chain and the fish. The reason why this cup is rare is because of the shape, and the lid of the cup is a human face.
Human face pattern spear head local ornamentation
So is there a bronze ware similar to the shape or ornamentation of this human face cup collected by the Freer Museum of Art in the United States, which has not been discovered for so many years, and a very rare opportunity has recently appeared. In the 2018 Hong Kong Datang International Spring Auction, a spearhead of the late Shang Dynasty human face pattern was photographed. It is not difficult to find that the local ornament of the spearhead of the human face pattern is exactly the same as the human face of the lid of the human face cup collected by the Freer Museum of Art in the United States, which shows that this pattern has a special meaning, and the back of the head of the human face cover has a dragon body (or snake body) that rolls down the face, which is integrated with the human face of the lid, and we can see two dragon claws on both sides of the neck of the cup, so the overall shape of the human face cup should be "human face dragon body".
As a treasure Yi Gui
An artifact very similar to the shape of the human face cup is the Zuobao Yi Gui of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, a Shang Evening Vessel, with a height of 21.3 cm, a belly depth of 13 cm, a caliber of 14.9 cm, and a bottom diameter of 17 cm. The inscription is written in three lines as Bao Yi. The instrument is round, there are high circle feet underneath, there are ears next to it, the upper end of the ear is the head shape of the beast, and there is a cloud decoration, the cover is decorated with two animal face patterns, as a relative phase, the ear of the animal face, the horn is tilted quite high, the instrument is decorated with a wide diamond-shaped pattern, forming a triangular decorative surface, the diamond pattern is filled with a thin line cloud thunder pattern, between the long triangle decorative surfaces, each decorated with two triangular patterns, the pattern is centered on the animal head at the upper end of the ear, for symmetrical placement, the circle foot is decorated with a long deformed animal pattern, and the animal pattern is embedded in the middle of the eye pattern. Fill the ground with thin lines of cloud thunder.
The era of the human face cup belongs to the late Yin Ruins, and at the same time as the era of the Yin Ruins Oracle, the human face cup collected by the Freer Museum of Art in the United States is related to the gods with many human snake (or dragon) bodies recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
On this human face cup, there are very exquisite geometric patterns such as dragon patterns, linings and paperback patterns, which are exquisitely made, graceful and atmospheric, and unique in shape, which is a treasure in the bronze ware of the late Shang Dynasty.