(jazzy piano music)
- [Beth] We're looking at an amazing ancient Chinese
bronze vessel, one that's about 3000 years old.
- [Keith] Objects like this were made to be used
in elaborate ritual banquets offered to deceased ancestors.
For a pitcher or a ewer like this
it's thought that its particular function
would have been containing warm liquids.
That's why it's got a lid.
Probably wine made from brewed grains,
the ancestral version of sake that we know today.
- [Beth] Ancestor worship is such an important part
of Chinese culture and this is during the Shang Dynasty
when this practice emerges.
- [Keith] Ancestor worship has a very long history in China.
We can be very confident about its existence
during the Shang Dynasty because bronze containers
that were used in ritual ceremonies often bear inscriptions
and the inscriptions name deceased ancestors,
my deceased father, Ding, my deceased mother, Wu.
So we know that these objects had close associations
with deceased family members.
- [Beth] And they were often found in tombs.
- [Keith] Vessels like this were made for use during life.
They're often taken to the grave
because there were treasured objects and there was a sense
that ancestor worship had to continue in the afterlife.
- [Beth] I think it's important for us to talk
about how difficult it was to make these objects.
- [Keith] The advent of the use of bronze
signifies an important turn in human history.
Bronze is a man-made medium, so it illustrates very clearly
the advent of the human ability to manufacture materials
that don't occur in nature.
Now for bronze, the constituents do appear in nature.
It's copper, tin and lead.
We're looking at the final stage of a very long process
that needs to be traced all the way back
to the extraction of the raw ores from the earth.
Those ores would have been refined
and possibly shipped a long distance
from their source of extraction to where they would have
been used in foundries.
- [Beth] And bronze ages in a particular way.
And so we're looking at a surface that is very different
than when it emerged from its mold.
- [Keith] We should think of the original surface
as like copper new penny.
As an object like this is buried
for prolonged periods of time in the moist environment
of a subterranean tomb, what happens is
what we call a patina, a kind of corrosion
forms on the surface.
- [Beth] As I look at this, it feels as though
it's teeming with life.
- [Keith] When I first saw this, I was amazed
at the vitality of the surface.
There are all sorts of animals that are recognizable,
but not all are complete, in some cases only heads.
- [Beth] So for example, at the very front of the lid
we see what looks to me like a monster face with horns.
- [Keith] But there's no body.
A similarly dismembered element appears
at the back of the lid where you've got
a head that looks like the head of a buffalo.
And again, a search for a body comes up fruitless.
- [Beth] And we don't always have real animals.
We have imaginary composite creatures.
- [Keith] If we look at the buffalo,
he's given a pair of very strange horns
that are in the form of fish.
Not only are these not all real animals,
but many of them are quite fantastical.
- [Beth] In between the recognizable animals,
dragons and elephants and tigers,
are these spiral forms that also feel so alive.
- [Keith] The tiger looks like he's about to pounce.
He's looking over his shoulder so you get a sense
that the artisan knew the animal that he was drawing.
My favorite is the standing bird.
From a distance it seems to be represented almost whole.
You have him looking straight forward with staring eyes.
His beak leaps off the front of the vessel.
He's got wings along the flanks of the vessel.
Its legs are actually the front pair of legs
of the container itself.
But when you start looking closer,
components of that bird are quite fantastical themselves.
The wing takes the shape of a coiled dragon.
I wish I knew what a person who was using this vessel
3000 years ago would have thought
when looking at these motifs.
When I look at them a depiction of a world
that is in constant flux, where things are emerging
and retreating, coming into shape and disappearing,
going back and forth between our natural world
and a supernatural world.
- [Beth] Also there are times when we see one animal
in the jaws of another.
- [Keith] One characteristic of Chinese bronzes
of this period is a kind of brutality.
There's a large monster mask with its jaws wide open.
What's inside its jaws, but the head of a humanoid
who is essentially the back leg of the vessel.
And then he seems to be encased
in a serpent that surrounds his body.
- [Beth] There were many cities
that were producing bronze vessels,
most of them for ritual use.
- [Keith] At the advent of the Bronze Age,
access to man-made metal like bronze
would have been most important for practical reasons,
agricultural tools and weapons, for example.
What's completely interesting about the Chinese instance
is that the resource that could have been used
solely for practical reasons
of increasing agricultural output or conquering enemies
was chiefly reserved for use to create
incredibly important ritual objects
like containers used in ancestor worship.
- [Beth] But that makes sense in that world view
if the sacrificing to the ancestors could ensure harvests,
could ensure the wellbeing of the state and its people.
- [Keith] The fact that bronze was reserved
for these very special functions indicates
that these containers were among the most important objects
that were being made at the time.
It's thought that given the complexity
of the ancient bronze industry was probably
the special prerogative of the king.
- [Beth] It looks as though it was cast,
it was created in one piece.
- [Keith] The lid would have been made separately.
And the handle was made as a third piece.
Each of those units would have been made
in a separate piece mold assembly.
So this object started as a ceramic model
and the decoration may well have been carved
in the ceramic body of the model.
It's this technical difference that allows us to think
of the Chinese Bronze Age as an independent local invention
that was created by Chinese craftsmen.
(jazzy piano music)