Tripod Cauldron (Ding) (1200–1100 BCE): Art, History and Details

Tripod Cauldron (Ding) (1200–1100 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In ancient China, bronze tripods of the type called ding were made in sets of different sizes to be used in rituals in which grain and meat was offered to the spirits of the ancestors. These bronzes were subsequently both collected items and major scholarly preoccupations in Chinese history. They were prized art treasures that provide source materials for Chinese historiography and antiquity studies. Catalogues of archaic bronzes have been published since the Song dynasty. Scholars studied the bronze inscriptions, typologies, and terminologies, and these studies exerted an impact in the field well before the birth of modern art history and archaeology.

Object facts

• Title: Tripod Cauldron (Ding)
• Date: 1200–1100 BCE
• Culture: China, Shang dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1046 BCE)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 14.3 x 12.5 cm (5 5/8 x 4 15/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Shang Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1960.288

A detail from the museum

The vessel shows a band of silkworms and cicadas in two registers.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Karlgren, B. "Marginalia on some Bronze Albums." BMFEA, 1959, no. 31.
• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review | 1960.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 10 (December 1960): 223–254.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Four Ritual Vases,” March 27, 1962, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.