Wine Vessel (Zun) (c. 1000 BCE): Art, History and Details

Wine Vessel (Zun) (c. 1000 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Although the Zhou defeated the Shang, the performance of religious rites and the casting of ceremonial bronzes continued. Zhou bronze art, nevertheless, reveals the artistic sentiments of a new era. There was as much confidence in the achievements of the living as observance of ritual duties for the dead. For example, this wine vessel combines artistic imagination with a display of strength and force. Bold images of buffalo heads with protruding horns were cast onto the middle section. Together with the four notched flanges extending downward below the flaring mouth, there is an effect of overflowing energy.

Object facts

• Title: Wine Vessel (Zun)
• Date: c. 1000 BCE
• Culture: China, Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–771 BCE)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 29.5 cm (11 5/8 in.)
• Collection: China - Zhou Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1951.151

Collection credit

Gift from Howard Hollis and Company

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William M. “A Chinese Ceremonial Bronze.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 39, no. 1 (January 1952): 6–7.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Sullivan, Michael. Chinese and Japanese Art. New York: Grolier, 1965.

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.