fang ding BM-1981-0530.1

Period:Shang dynasty Production date:1200BC-1050BC (circa)
Materials:bronze
Technique:
Subjects:taotie
Dimensions:Diameter: 14.70 centimetres Height: 24 centimetres (to handles) Width: 18.50 centimetres

Description:
Bronze vessel of the type called fang ding (square ding). This one is known as Yin Guang fang ding for the inscription it bears. The rectangular body stands above four slender legs, all of which are decorated at the top with horned taotie or buffalo faces, and is crowned with two handles, located just in the middle of the rim at the small sides and decorated with intaglio scroll and quills. The outer sides of the body are decorated with a narrow border of composite creatures in relief just below the rim. The creatures appear to be double-bodied snakes with a horned taotie head interspersed with bossed roundels; both lying over a leiwen (tight scrolls) background. Below there is a plain panel, which is surrounded by rows of projecting bosses. Four flanges project from the corners of the body.
IMG


Comments:Rawson 1987:Fang ding has an ancient pedigree. Both shape and decoration descend from bronzes of the Erligang period (Fig. 5); even earlier the shape appears among Erlitou ceramics. Double-bodied snakes in the upper border also had a long history beginning in the Erlitou period. On this ding, and many like it the motifs were used with almost no variation, making one of the most stereotyped vessels of the late Shang and early Western Zhou. Among inscribed Shang and Zhou examples the most famous are the Zuo Ce Da vessels in the Freer Gallery and the National Palace Museum, Taibei. These early Western Zhou ding are almost identical with the Yin Guang fang ding and illustrate continuity in bronze-casting at the time of the Zhou conquest.The inscription on this ding describes a grant of cowries from the king to Yin, the casting of the ding, and notes that the king was attacking the Jing Fang, peoples known from oracle-bone inscriptions to have been in conflict with the Shang. The The small neat characters are paralleled on a few other late Shang vessels.