Ritual Cooking Vessel

Original Language TitleDing

CultureChinese

Date13th-12th century B.C.E.

MediumBronze

DimensionsOverall: 5 3/8 × 5 3/16 inches (13.65 × 13.18 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number33-1467

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

East Asian Art

Terms

DescriptionBronze vessel with flat all-over design of T'ao T'ieh mask. Inlay of black. Inscription inside lip of two characters.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Chinese Bronzes, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1934, no. 19.

Exhibition of Chinese Bronzes in American Collections, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 13 - November 27, 1938.

Ancient Chinese Bronzes, Asia House Gallery, New York, October 10 - December 15, 1968.

Gallery Label

Tripod vessels known as ding were used to cook offerings of meat and grain. They were fashioned in ceramic as early as the fourth millennium B.C.E. and later became indispensible components of the bronze ritual repertoire. On this ding, the motifs can be distinguished from the background by their larger spirals. The band below the mouth is deliberately ambiguous, readable either as confronted profile dragons or as a frontal monster mask.

Provenance

Purchased on the Chinese art market, through Laurence Sickman, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.

Published References

Florance Waterbury, Early Chinese Symbols and Literature: Vestiges and Speculations, with Particular Reference to the Ritual Bronzes of the Shang Dynasty (New York: E. Weybe, 1942), pl. 37 (repro.).

Ludwig Bachhofer, A Short History of Chinese Art (New York: Pantheon, 1946), 32, fig. 11 (repro.).

Max Loehr et al., Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China, cat. no. 20 (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Asia Society, 1968), pl. 57 (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, George L. McKenna, and Marc F. Wilson, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. II, Art of the Orient. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 9 (repro.).

Marc F. Wilson, “Form and Design: Chinese Archaic Bronzes and Jades” Apollo, special issue for the Asian art collection in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Vol. XCVII, no. 133 (March 1973), 48, pl. 1 (repro.).

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 272 (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 287, pl. 11 (repro.).

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