Bells of this type are among China’s earliest percussion instruments. Many have been unearthed from mountain slopes and along riverbanks in south China. This area was occupied by distinctive cultures that coexisted with the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties. Along this southern frontier, it appears that large bronze bells were more important than bronze vessels to the local aristocracy.
This bell was designed to be mounted on its hollow stem with its curved mouth facing up and struck from the outside with a mallet. Unlike other types of bronze bells that were assembled as chime sets, this one was intended to be played as an individual instrument. It may have been sounded during ceremonies or military campaigns. The eyebrow-shaped lines that skim the margins of this bell depict imaginary dragons or realistic reptiles.
Date
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41.7 × 28.9 cm (16 1/2 × 11 3/8 in.); Diam.: 28.9 cm (11 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Lucy Maud Buckingham Collection
Reference Number
1924.243
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Berthold Laufer, Archaic Chinese Bronzes of the Shang, Chou, and Han Periods in the Collections of Mr. Parish-Watson (New York, 1922), 13–14, pl. VI.
Osvald Sirén, A History of Early Chinese Art (London: E. Benn, 1929), pl. 53A.
Sueji Umehara, Shina kodō seikwa, pt. 1, vol. 2 (Osaka: Yamanaka and Co., 1933), pl. 159.
Charles Fabens Kelley and Ch’en Meng-chia, Chinese Bronzes from the Buckingham Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1946), 78–79, pl. XLIII.
Cheng Mengjia, “A Chronological Study of Western Zhou Bronzes (V),” Kaogu xuebao 3 (1956), pl. 13 left.
Virginia C. Kane, “The Independent Bronze Industries in the South of China Contemporary with the Shang and Western Chou Dynasties,” Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 28 (1973–74): 77–107, fig. 30.
Minao Hayashi, In Shu jidai seidōki no kenkyū [Conspectus of Yin and Zhou Bronzes], vol. 1, pt. 2 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1984), 381.
Lothar Alexander von Falkenhausen, “Ritual Music in Bronze Age China: An Archaeological Perspective” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1988), 297.
Elinor Pearlstein, “The Chinese Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago: Foundations of Scholarly Taste,” Orientations (June 1993): 36–47, fig. 9.
Elinor Pearlstein, “Early Chicago Chronicles of Chinese Art,” in Jason Steuber with Guolong Lai, eds., Collectors, Collections & Collecting the Arts of China: Histories & Challenges (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014), 13, pl. 1.8.
MacDermid Parish-Watson (died 1941), New York; sold to Kate Sturges Buckingham (1858–1937), Chicago [Kate served as executor of her sister Lucy Maud Buckingham’s estate and continued expanding Lucy’s collection following her death in 1920], Oct. 1921; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1924.
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