A LARGE AND RARE CHINESE BRONZE ARROW VASE, TOUHU

A LARGE AND RARE CHINESE BRONZE ARROW VASE, TOUHU
MING DYNASTY

The hexagonal-section body rising from six beast-mask feet below panels of waves and foliate motifs, the compressed globular section decorated with six dragons divided ruyi-shaped flanges below six roundels depicting trigrams, the tall neck set with two male figures standing on cloud-shaped platforms, and with two chilong clambering up the sides, the four tubular rings decorated with taotie and the further roundels of trigrams, with a paper label for the Finer Collection 'CB 30', 11kg, 59.5cm.

Provenance: purchased from Jan van Beers Oriental Art, London, 19th December 1996.

Cf. Saint Louis Art Museum, United States, accession no. 15:2005, from the gift of Robert E. Kresko, illustrated in Philip Hu, Later Chinese Bronzes: The Saint Louis Art Museum and Robert E. Kresko Collections, p.37, no.5 for a related arrow vase with a similar dragon motifs divided by flanges.

The game of touhu involved pitching arrows into narrow tubular-necked pots and had been a popular game from about 770 BC. In the Ming dynasty, the game became more widespread and was played by rich merchants and scholars as well as the aristocracy. Wang Ti, active during the Jiajing period, noted about the production of arrow vases in his Touhu yijie (Rules of Playing Touhu): 'Some fancy craftsmen recently also created some unconventional forms of touhu, some can dangle like a swing, some are of exaggerated size, some are with two handles, some even with four!'; see Wang Ti, Touhu yijie, Beijing, p.40. Refer also to Isabelle Lee, ‘Touhu: Three Millennia of the Chinese Arrow Vase and the Game of Pitch-Pot, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society , vol 56, pp. 13-27 for further discussion of the game.

明 銅螭龍人物紋貫耳投壺

From the Finer Collection of later bronzes and hand warmers.