Busacca Gallery

Description:

This Tripod Vessel has handles rising from the rim, the interior cast with a clan sign design, with mottled greenish patina. It has three tall cylindrical legs, the surfaces displaying earthen encrustations upon the mottled vessel. A one of a kind, CHOICE WARRING STATES BRONZE DING, 475-221 BC. The extremely rare bronze tripod vessel with a band of molded ornamentation beneath the rim. 8 x 9.5". In excellent condition with light encrustation and very desirable. In Chinese history and culture, possession of one or more ancient dings is often associated with power and dominion over the land. Therefore, the ding is often used as an implicit symbolism for power. The term "inquiring of the ding" (Chinese: pinyin: wèn dǐng) is often used interchangeably with the quest for power. *All of the art is edited and chosen by us for its high quality and workmanship before posting. We are committed to enhancing our customer’s lives by discovering creating, and pointing out only the best art we can find in the world today. We Are Taste-Makers, Art Advisers, Consultants & Publishers Of Spectacular Art Stories. Our job is to be intermediaries between buyers and sellers. We are vetting for high end art patrons. We are determined to catalog the world's most exceptional art and share it with everyone.

Reference:

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_(vessel)

A ding (Chinese: pinyin: dǐng; Wade–Giles: ting) is an ancient Chinese vessel shape, a cauldron with legs, a lid and two facing handles. They were made in two shapes with round vessels having three legs and rectangular ones four and were used for cooking, storage and the preparation of ritual offerings to ancestors. They can be traced back as early as the Erlitou phase of Chinese history. Both ceramic and bronze ding have been found at the Erlitou site, with some ceramic ding dating back to the Xia Dynasty.



In the early Bronze Age of China, the use of wine and food vessels served a religious purpose. While ding were the most important food vessels, wine vessels were the more prominent ritual bronzes of this time, likely due to the belief in Shamanism and spirit worship. Ding were used to make ritual sacrifices, both human and animal, to ancestors. They varied in size, but were generally quite large, indicating that whole animals were likely sacrificed.[3] The sacrifices were meant to appease ancestors due to the Shang belief that spirits had the capability to affect the world of the living.[4] If the ancestors were happy, the living would be blessed with good fortune.



During the Early Western Zhou Dynasty, the people underwent a political and cultural change. King Wu of Zhou believed that the Shang people were drunkards. He believed that their over-consumption of wine led their king to lose the Mandate of Heaven, thus leading to the downfall of the Shang dynasty. Because of this belief, food vessels (and ding in particular) replaced wine vessels in importance. Bronze vessels underwent what has been the "Ritual Revolution." This theory suggests that because there was a change in decor as well as the types and variations of vessels found in tombs, their function shifted from solely religious to a more secular one. Instead of sacrificing food to appease ancestors, the Zhou used ding to show off the status of the deceased to both the living and spirits. Ding symbolized status. For example, emperors were buried with nine ding, feudal lords with seven, ministers with five, and scholar-bureaucrats with three or one. The vessels served as symbols of authority for the elite far into the Warring States period.