AN UNUSUAL BRONZE BOTTLE-FORM VESSEL, HU

Both the shape and decoration of this vase are quite unusual. Similar bands of engraved decoration that include feathers, sawtooth, criss-cross and diamond pattern, can be seen on the sides of a bronze scoop with dragon-head handle dated Western Han, excavated in 1971 from the Wangniuling M1, Hepu, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and illustrated in Ou Luo Yicui: Guangxi Baiyue Wenhua Wenwu Jingpinyi, Beijing, 2006, pp. 121-23. A similar diamond pattern can also be seen on a wide band that decorates the sides of a stem cup, dated Eastern Han, which was excavated in 1955, Guixian Railway Station M74, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and is illustrated ibid., p. 167. This stem cup is also illustrated by Zhixian Jason Sun, Age of Empires: Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2017, p. 199, no. 116, where the author notes that the unusual decoration, which is engraved rather than cast, is representative of a "rare group of bronzes" produced in "far southern and southwestern China," and was most likely influenced by bronzes of South and Southeast Asia.