AN ARCHAIC BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL ( GU )Shang dynasty, 12th-11th century B.C. The beaker finely cast with four slender blades rising to the trumpet mouth from a band of four dragons encircling the base of the neck, the design filled with tight scrolls over leiwen ground, the surface between the blades plain and undecorated, the straight mid-section quartered by raised flanges with mirrored hooks and rounded ovals to form a pair of taotie masks, also filled with leiwen scrolls except the rounded bulging eyes, the waist with a pair of cruciform apertures interrupting two raised lines, the lower section echoing the raised flanges above with a band of elephants arranged in pairs followed by another pair of taotie masks on the splayed foot, the short foot ring straight and plain, the surface encrusted with bright malachite green and cuprite red over areas of silvery-grey bronze, inside the foot cast with two pictograms. 12 1/8in (31cm) high 商 《亞鳥》青銅觚 Provenance: Collection of Philip Dodson Sprouse (1906-1977), California, former US Ambassador to Cambodia Roger Keverne Ltd., London, April 4, 2002 來源： 前美國駐柬埔寨大使 Philip Dodson Sprouse (1906-1977) 舊藏，加州 Roger Keverne Ltd.古董行，倫敦，2002年4月4日 The ' ya niao ' (亞鳥) pictogram cast to the interior of the vessel was recorded by N. Barnard and K.Y. Cheung in Zhong Ri Ou Mei Ao Niu suojian suota suomo jinwen huibian (Rubbings and Hand Copies of Bronze Inscription in Chinese, Japanese, European, American, Austrailian and New Zealand Collections), Taipei, 1978, Vol. 7, pp. 686-687, nos. 1000 and 1001, both on bronze jue vessels, one in a Japanese private collection in Kyoto and the other in the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. Shang dynasty bronze gu of this iconic form with slight variation of the designs are well-studied with manyparable examples in museum collections and private hands. pare the very similar bronze gu in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated by J. Fontein and T. Wu, Unearthing China's Past , Boston, 1973, pp. 38-39, no. 8; another in the Saint Louis Art Museum and illustrated by S.D. Owyoung, Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Saint Louis Art Museum , Saint Louis, 1997, pp. 58-59, no. 8.pare also the very similar bronze gu illustrated in the catalogue of J. J. Lally & Co., Chinese Archaic Bronzes: The Collection of Daniel Shapiro , New York, 2014, no. 3.