Wine vessel (Jue) (c. 1200 BCE): Art, History and Details

Wine vessel (Jue) (c. 1200 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Wine and food played a major role in ritual offerings to the ancestral spirits and the Supreme Ancestor (Shangdi) performed by the Shang rulers in the state cult of ancestor worship. A variety of wine vessels—each type given a specific name—was cast to bear witness to the power and artistic vitality of this remote civilization. This example of a jue wine cup is for libations. Other types of wine vessels include jia (wine warming vessel), fangyou (square wine container), and gu (beaker with a trumpeted mouth for pouring).

Object facts

• Title: Wine vessel (Jue)
• Date: c. 1200 BCE
• Culture: China, Shang dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1046 BCE)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 22.7 x 17.2 cm (8 15/16 x 6 3/4 in.)
• Collection: China - Shang Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1960.42

Collection credit

Cornelia Blakemore Warner Fund and Edward L. Wittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sueji Umehara 梅原末治. O-Bei shūcho Shina kodō seika [歐米蒐儲支那古銅精華 = Selected Relics of Ancient Chinese Bronzes from Collections in Europe and America]. Ōsaka: 山中商會, 1935.
• Karlgren, Bernhard. "New Studies on Chinese Bronzes," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 9 [1937], 1–117.
• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review | 1960.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 10 (December 1960): 223–254.

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.