July & August 2008

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With extraordinary vision, Sir Peter Moores began collecting ancient Chinese bronzes more than 20 years ago. He started on this adventure well before he bought the grand 18th-century mansion at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, with its famous entrance hall designed by Robert Adam in 1760. Here Sir Peter has created a magnificent museum, in which a group of more than 70 ritual vessels and other bronzes of the period c. 1300 BC-AD 100 is complemented by several other important collections, including Neapolitan painting (1600-1800), Northern European works of Art (1450-1650), British Portraits and British Folk Art.

Such bronzes are among the most elaborate and complex bronze castings from any part of the ancient world. The so-called Chinese ritual vessels were developed to hold food and wine for the offerings to the ancestors. The practice of using elaborately cast containers was initiated by the Shang dynasty (c. 1500-1045 BC) and carried further, with many stylistic changes, by the next dynasty, the Zhou (c. 1045-221 BC). By the time of the Qin unification of China and their successors, the Han (206 BC-AD 220), use of these elaborate castings had declined.

The outstanding Chinese bronze collection at Compton Verney has recently been in the public eye following the purchase of a remarkable Shang vessel from the Albright Knox collection in Buffalo, upstate New York (Fig. 2). This very rare, rectangular food vessel on four pointed and splayed legs (of a type known as a fang jia) is famous for its outstandingly fine decoration of an owl incorporated in the detailed cast surface. Only a limited number of Shang vessels carry such designs. The owl enjoyed popularity for only a short period, being set alongside the much less readily identifiable monster decoration, known by the name taotie.1 The latter creature, which does not seem to represent a known beast, could be elaborated with additional features or simplified, as the space on the vessels and the divisions into compartments of ornament allowed. Because the owl motif was so carefully assimilated to the taotie system of intricate embellishment, at first sight it does not appear an extraordinary innovation. It was, none the less, a complete departure from the previous tradition of Shang ornament.

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