Taiwan Today

"... subtly mold the breathing bronze ... "—Vergil (70-19 B.C.)

Chinese of the Shang era were subtly molding bronze wares half a world from Rome and more a thousand years before Vergil wrote this line in the Aeneid. Subsequently, these bronzes—some small enough to fit into a child's hand, others too heavy for a man to lift—were buried and forgotten. Many of the greatest were not excavated and acclaimed as artistic masterpieces until three millennia later.

When Shang bronzes first attracted worldwide at­tention, the Chinese said they dated to Shang times (1765-1122 B.C.). Western archeologists sniffed. Such workmanship was too sophisticated to come from a primitive society, the experts said. Not until dozens of inscribed bronze vessels were excavated at Anyang in Honan province in 1934 was it definitely established that they were from China's oldest dynasty of which there is written record. Today no one disputes Shang's right to rank as one of the greatest bronze ages in world history.

The Shang bronze craftsmen made pieces of strik­ing design and structural perfection. Even the most elaborately decorated utensils show no imperfections, a feat that has rarely been duplicated by other workers in bronze. Some of the finest work of Benvenuto Cellini was faultily cast and had to be patched.

Bronze is usually an alloy of copper and tin, al­though other metals were used with copper in Shang times as now. The early Chinese bronzes show a color range from brassy reds, in which a high proportion of copper was used, to the silvery sheen of mirrors made half of copper and half of tin. Chemical analysis of some bronzes shows more than 90 per cent copper. One early Shang wine container is 92 per cent copper, 7 per cent tin, and 1 per cent lead. Pieces sometimes contain small amounts of zinc, antimony, iron or silver.

Shang bronze workers and those of the succeeding Chou dynasty (1122-249 B.C.) used two methods of casting. One involved the making of a detailed wax model; this provided the basis for a clay mold into which the molten bronze was poured. The other method employed sectional pottery molds. The bronze pieces were fitted together and welded after the final casting.

Bronze is a durable material. Many utensils surviv­ed thousands of years of burial in the moist earth of the Yellow River basin in almost perfect condition. Even those eroded by age retain their graceful shapes and show the decorative genius of Shang and Chou craftsmen. Some of the finest specimens were dug up by farmers of North China early in this century and sold to Peking dealers. From there many of them passed into the hands of private collectors.

A number of museums have Shang bronzes as well as the heavily inscribed Chou ceremonial vessels and more imitative wares of the Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) and later dynasties. The Academia Sinica in Taiwan has retained some of the pieces it unearthed in Anyang in 1934. The National Palace Museum in Taipei has more than 4,000 bronze items. The Na­tional Historical Museum in Taipei also has a com­prehensive collection. Among the leading foreign col­lections are those of the William Rockhill Nelson Art Gallery in Kansas City and the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. Shang bronzes have brought prices as high as US$60,000.

Chinese bronzes began as purely functional utensils. Ceremonial use came later. Bronze vessels were used in cooking and serving food and in warm­ing and pouring wine. Bronze was made into bells, a wide variety of weapons, and such miscellaneous objects as mirrors and chariot fittings. Commemora­tive urns were cast to make weddings, promotions, and military victories. They were often inscribed.

Shang and Chou food and wine containers were in more than 20 styles. These four are the most com­monly seen today:

Ting—food containers for ceremonial and banquet use. The size ranges from a diameter of two inches to pots more than two feet across. These containers are alike in having two ear-like projections at the top. Most are set on solid tripod legs. Square ting have four legs.

Hsien—steamers made of two separate vessels with a perforated bronze plate to fit between. The top half resembles a legless ting; the bottom half has the shape of a li, a pot-bellied vessel with three hollow legs.

Chueh —wine vessels used to pour libations for the gods. There is a spout-like lip and a tripod base. The chueh, which looks like an inverted helmet with legs, probably was also used to warm wine. One ancient tale holds that the vessel's vaguely bird-like form resulted in the name chueh, which has onomatopoetic resem­blance to the chirping of a bird.

Hu—wine containers, sometimes lidded, with two ring handles suspended between the spreading lip and the round-bellied body. These jars were used primarily to store wine and other liquids.

Shang decorations were fresh and vigorous. Favorite designs are scrolls of angular thunder or rounded cloud patterns carried out with geometric symmetry over part or all of the surface. Many pieces are ornamented with projecting studs. Animalistic themes are frequent, including the cicada, snake, drag­on, deer and elephant. The human face also occurs.

However, the most common decorative figure is the tiao-tieh, an ogre that looks like a cross between a horned lion and the griffin and is sometimes called a "glutton" from the literal translation of the name. In Shang works the tiao-tieh is highly stylized and mask-­like. This weird creature gives some of the bronzes a grotesque appearance.

Bronzes were more often inscribed in Chou times than in the Shang era. The inscription may be only the name of the owner, or it may range up to 500 characters—as in the case of the Mao Kung ting in the National Palace Museum. Uninscribed bronzes are not as valuable as those with writing. This has led to the forging of inscriptions. However, the incised characters are easily distinguished from those cast in the surface.

The writing on bronzes includes some of the oldest historical records found in China. The Tso Chuan, an ancient historical commentary, tells of a code of crimi­nal law indelibly cast in bronze by the state of Cheng in 536 B.C. Other bronzes record settlements of bound­ary disputes and stipulate titles to property.

Connoisseurs think highly of the greenish or velvety black patina that centuries of burial has brought to many ancient bronzes. Vessels are dirt-encrusted and pock-marked when lifted from the soil. In earlier times, Chinese collectors had their bronzes rubbed by hand. The only polish used was the natural oil of the palms. Power polishers and finely grained abrasives may be used today and electrolysis can stop the process of disintegration. The result is renewed life for the subtlety of bronze artifacts that are among the oldest known to Chinese civilization.