Wine warmer (Jue)
Every ancient Chinese bronze thus far discovered was cast using a complex pottery section-mold—a Chinese invention. But this vessel’s shape—angular, with a thin-walled body, a rim that appears “folded over,” and a “strap” handle—implies an earlier hammered sheet-metal mode of manufacture that might have been introduced from western Asia, where bronze metallurgy developed two thousand years before it appeared in China.
Artwork Details
- 商 青銅爵
- Title: Wine warmer (Jue)
- Period: Shang dynasty (ca. 1600–1046 BCE)
- Date: ca. 16th century BCE
- Culture: China
- Medium: Bronze
- Dimensions: H. 5 3/4 in. (14.6 cm); W. with spout 6 1/8 in. (15.6 cm); D. with handle 2 3/4 in. (7 cm)
- Classification: Metalwork
- Credit Line: Purchase, Bequest of Dorothy Graham Bennett, 2003
- Object Number: 2003.432
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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