In ancient China, the five metals most appreciated were gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin. Gold and silver were used mainly for coinage or the needs of royalty while copper and tin were used for housewares or utilitarian purposes.

Around 500 BC, metalworkers in the southern state of Wu developed an iron smelting technology that would not be practiced in Europe until late medieval times in 1307 AD. Ancient Chinese iron smelters realized that if they achieved a temperature of 1130°C, hot enough to be considered a blast furnace, iron combines with 4.3% carbon and melts. They discovered that as a liquid, iron can be cast into molds, a method far less laborious than individually forging each piece of iron from a bloom. The vast majority of Chinese iron manufacture from the Zhou dynasty onward was of cast iron. Also during this time, Chinese metallurgists had found that wrought iron and cast iron could be melted together to yield an alloy of steel. According to legend, the sword of Liu Bang, the first Han emperor, was made in this fashion. Some texts of the era mention harmonizing the hard and the soft in the context of ironworking; the phrase may refer to this process.

By the Han Dynasty (202 BC–AD 220), Chinese ironworking achieved a scale and sophistication while Europe was still in the Dark Ages. In the first century, the Han government established ironworking as a state monopoly and built a series of large blast furnaces in Henan province, each capable of producing several tons of iron per day. By this time, Chinese metallurgists had discovered how to puddle molten pig iron, stirring it in the open air until it lost its carbon and became wrought iron. The Chinese called the process chao, literally meaning to stir fry.

Song Yingxing wrote of how gold was the most precious metal of them all. He also outlined the different grades of gold and its malleable qualities. To eliminate trace elements of other metals found in gold alloys, Song Yingxing outlined the use of a crucible technique. He noted that musical and announcing bells of higher quality were made of different copper alloys, while those of lesser quality were made of iron. He also provided weighted formulas of different metal compositions for certain bells, for example, the casting a large bell in an audience hall or pavilion that required 47,000 catties of copper, 4,000 catties of tin, 50 oz. of gold, and 120 oz. of silver in its composition. Song Yingxing also described the intricate individual casting processes for making cooking pots and pans, metal statues, metal barrels of cannons, metallic mirrors, and different metallic coins of copper or iron. He described the processes of hammer forging with the initial casting of an anvil, and noted that in the heating process of forging, coal accounted for 70% of the fuel, charcoal taking the rest at 30%. He also outlined the quench-hardening process of rapid cooling in clear water immediately after iron and steel products were forged.

The Art of Ancient Chinese Bronze Ware or Qing Tong Qi

The U.S. National Gallery of Art defines the Great Bronze Age of China as the period between 2000 BC and 771 BC. The development of bronze metallurgy in ancient civilizations meant a settled and organized society, for bronze-making required locating, protecting, mining, and smelting ore that contains copper and tin, the two metals that are alloyed to produce bronze. Bronze was customarily used to make better tools for agriculture and better weapons for waging war. In ancient China, the talents of bronze workers were put to a third, very special use: the casting of drinking vessels and food containers which played central roles in ancestor worship and state rituals.

According to the religion of the Shang dynasty (1600-1100 BC), the king derived his power from his divine ancestors whose spirits could influence the course of events if they were propitiated with offerings and sacrifices. Bronze vessels were used to contain the wine and food which were offered up in ceremonies performed at the altar of the ancestral shrine. Their possession and use seems to have been restricted to the king, the royal family, and the aristocracy.

Bronze thus was related to power and divinity. According to legend, King Yu, founder of China's first dynasty, the Xia, around 2200 BC, had nine monumental food cauldrons cast to symbolize the nine provinces of his realm. When the Xia dynasty fell, the nine vessels that were called the Auspicious Bronzes of the State were passed to the victorious Shang dynasty and later to the Zhou dynasty in the 11th century BC. In 1976 a bronze vessel was discovered whose inscription records that it was commissioned only eight days after the defeat of the Shang and the capture of the Auspicious Bronzes. These bronzes, however, have not yet been discovered. The oldest vessels discovered thus far are dated to 1800 BC.

While retaining their significance as symbols of power, the bronze vessels changed in form, purpose, and decorative style during each succeeding dynasty. The Shang are reputed to have made much use of wine in their rituals and they had many wine vessels created. The Zhou, who felt that overindulgence in wine offended Heaven, made fewer wine vessels and produced new types of food cauldrons and containers.

Over the millennia, bronze articles exposed to high humidity or buried underground undergo a natural change in which they develop a bright and beautiful coating or patina. The patina serves to protect the metal underneath from further damage. The color itself, however, which may range from rouge red to emerald green to sapphire blue, imparts added beauty and elegance to the vessel. Chinese are particularly fond of this colorful coating, and preserve it intact.

The bronze ware were unique national treasures for China in ancient times for their impressive designs, classical decorative ornamentation, and wealth of inscriptions. The ancient Chinese society fell into the Stone Tool Age and the Iron Tool Age. The earliest stoneware in China was found in 3000 B.C. The Shang and Zhou dynasties ushered China into the height of the Bronze Age. During this period the making of bronze ware reached its zenith. After the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods China entered the Iron Tool Age.

Meaning and Explanation of Ancient Chinese Ritual Bronzes

The decorations on vessels from the Shang seem rich with meaning, yet they resist our attempts to identify their inspiration or meaning. Often the emphasis is on a protruding eye, which seems to animate the vessel. The most frequently used decoration is the animal mask, which actually is composed of two creatures shown head-to-head in profile. Each contributes an eye, an ear or horn, and a jaw to the frontal presentation of a mysterious, awe-inspiring animal. In succeeding ages, this powerful form became increasingly abstract, sometimes dissolving into elaborate ornamentation. Gradually the religious significance of bronze artifacts decreased, and they were used as symbols of personal wealth and prestige, as homage to the living. By 210 BC, bronze craftsmanship was turned to making luxury items in complex shapes that were inlaid with silver and gold.

There is a symbolic design used in Chinese sacrificial bronzes 3,000 years ago that combines all sorts of animal characteristics found in the natural world into one ferocious creature, the t'ao-t'ieh, or beast of gluttony. Set in a fiercely blazing fire, the beast's bulging eyes glared straight at the observer, his great mouth gaped in a wide grin, flashing saber-like teeth. His stiletto claws were exposed and poised for action, and a pair of ears or horns protruded from his head. Ferocious a sight as it was, it conveyed mystery and beauty. The t'ao-t'ieh design is one of the most fantastic and imaginative to be found among Chinese bronze designs. It uniquely communicates the religious and ritual spirit of ancient Chinese bronze vessels. Bronze is an alloy of copper, tin, and a small amount of lead. Its appearance signaled the advancement in human culture from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age. For the approximately 2,000 years between the 17th century B.C. up until the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-200 A.D.), the Chinese people used rare and precious bronze to cast large quantities of ritual vessels, musical instruments, and weapons that were elegant in form, finely decorated, and clearly inscribed with Chinese characters. They affirm the artistic achievement of ancient China, and demonstrate how early Chinese used their ingenuity to create works incorporating both science and art from resources in nature.

In the ritualistic society of ancient China, bronze was employed primarily for the casting of ceremonial temple vessels used in sacrifices to the goods of heaven, earth, the mountains, and rivers. They were also used in vessels for banquets, honor awards, and funerals for the nobility. Because bronze is a durable material resistant to cracking and breakage, it was used by kings to cast inscribed vessels honoring the ancestors of dukes, princes, and ministers who had made a great contribution to their nation or sovereign, to establish a model and reminder for alter generations. The world-famous Mo Kung Ting , for example, a bronze tripod on display at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, was imperially commissioned. On the tripod interior is an inscription 497 characters in length, divided into 32 lines and two halves, extending from the mouth of the vessel to the bottom interior. The inscription is the imperial mandate for the casting of the vessel, written in a stately and powerful tone. The inscription on this particular vessel is the longest among bronzes that have been unearthed so far.

Bronzes can be classed into four main types, based on function: food vessels, wine vessels, water vessels, and musical instruments. Within each type, endless variation is to be found in form and design, fully demonstrating the rich imagination and creativity of the Chinese of the time. The kuei, for example, was a container for cooked millet that came in many different styles, equivalent to today's containers for cooked rice. Some had a circular base to stabilize the vessel belly; others had a heavy square base added onto the circular base, in a graceful contrast of geometrical form. The ting was a tripod vessel used for cooking, with a pair of knobs protruding from the mouth to facilitate handling. The three legs held the vessel at just the proper distance from the fire for cooking meat. The ch¹eh was a vessel especially designed for heating and drinking wine; it had a pour spout and side handles. The three legs facilitated warming the wine. The tsun was a major type of wine container that was either round or square in shape, or had a round mouth and square base. Ancient Chinese bronzes stressed balance and symmetry of form, and communicated solemnity and ceremony.

In most of the line designs used on bronzes, a main motif combines with a border design, pointing up its three-dimensional character. The beast of gluttony design was the most prominent in Shang Dynasty (16th-11th centuries B.C.) vessels. A side view of two separate symmetrical beasts was embossed on the vessel; when viewed together from the front, they combined their features into one beast. After the Western Chou period (11th century B.C. to 771 B.C.), bird designs gradually came to be used for decorative main designs, still maintaining the principle of symmetry. After the mid and late Western Chou period, chain link patterns, fish scale patterns, and wave patterns for the most part superseded animals as subject matter for the main design of bronze vessels. The principle of symmetry began at this point to be broken, and substituted by repeating chain link or band designs that encircled the vessel body. After the mid-Spring and Autumn period (770-476 B.C.), the most frequently used design was a vertically interlocking geometrical animal band design. In the Shang Dynasty, the border design used to complement the main design was usually clouds and lightning. Beginning in the mid-Western Chou, the designs became increasingly spare, and border design eventually fell into disuse. After the Spring and Autumn period, the sprouting grain and other designs began appearing in borders.

The techniques used in executing the various bronze designs went from the engraved lines and embossed designs used in the earlier periods, to deep relief and three dimensional sculpture-like designs, and eventually even to inlaid designs. Materials used for inlaid work included gold, silver, copper, and turquoise. Subject matter for inlaid work included animals, along with interlocking geometrical shapes based on straight lines, diagonal lines, and whorled lines. These were all added purely for decorative purposes, and were intricately and handsomely crafted.

Many scholars believe the decorations on the Shang ritual bronzes are directly related to mythology and are representing the religious ideology of Shang people; other scholars argue that the design is purely decorative and has no religious connotation.

The design seen on ancient Chinese bronzes are characterized by its stern and angular appearance; the images are not amiable motifs with a function to please the eye but have quite an opposite effect. Ancient Chinese bronzes have an exotic and mysterious character in the eyes of modern observers, because ornaments drawn from the vegetable kingdom are completely absent. The bronze decoration relies instead on a vocabulary of animals or animal-like designs, and the difference in vocabulary accounts for a radical difference in effect: the animal faces and staring eyes of the bronze decoration give it a compelling focus. No plant motif so rivets the viewer's attention. The most stunning element is the pair of animal eyes projecting from the bronze surface and staring at the viewer with a bewitching force. These protruding eyes are the eyes of a predator and, therefore, cannot be regarded in the same manner as other more cheerful images in art history.

Despite the relatively large number of examples it is still hard to come up with an acceptable explanation regarding the identity of the animal depicted on the bronze vessels. Sometimes it looks like a bull, sometimes like a tiger or the leopards on the Maya stone sculptures, and sometimes like a mixture of the two. The shape and the details are changing but the fixed gaze of the eyes remains the same, even in the Western Zhou when the animal face becomes almost entirely decorative and only the eyes can be clearly identified. Such a compelling dominance of the eyes in the design emphasizes their significance on the ritual utensils and, consequently, during the sacrificial ceremony. The staring face indicates the presence of the beast and its physical vicinity which was probably an important aspect of the sacrificial ceremony.

The fact that in Shang art the t'ao-t'ieh motifs appear on sacrificial vessels and not somewhere else is not circumstantial and cannot be overlooked. Art, in its earliest form is always related to religion and magic.The taotie was part of the Shang religious tradition. The fact that the taotie image cannot be identified as a living animal yet it has a more or less consistent appearance, verifies its solid place in the belief system of the Shang. There are numerous examples of imaginary animals or animal-like creatures, in different cultures who, while not being duplicates of living animals, play an important role both in religious and mythological ideology.

Another important factor in determining the connection of Shang bronze decorations to mythology is the understanding of the concept of myths. At the age when the Mezoamerican beast-faced gods were carved into stone, they presumably were not regarded as a myth but as reality. The same is true for the t'ao-t'ieh faces; myths come to be myths probably only after the mythical time has gone, they are always remembrances and not contemporary stories. The myth is regarded as a sacred story, and hence a true history, because it always deals with realities. The cosmogonic myth is true because the existence of the World is there to prove it; the myth of the origin of death is equally true because man's mortality proves it, and so on. Consequently, the correct thing to say would not be that the Shang bronze decorations are related to Shang mythology, although from a certain point of view they definitely are, but that they represent the contemporary religious reality and belief system. Viewing them from this angle, they by no means can be regarded as iconographically meaningless or meaningful only as pure form.

Thought and Customs     |     Festivals and Holidays     |     Feats and Accomplishments     |     Arts and Crafts