CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

As a tour de force of multiple casting, this piece
stands unrivaled by any metalwork from the ancient
world: the vessels themselves were cast using the
traditional ceramic section-mold technique, modified
to exploit the more recently invented patternblock
technology. 3 Individually cast components
were then soldered to the vessels and to each other
using a tin-lead solder — fifty-six soldering points
have been identified on the zun and forty-four on
the pan. The heads, tongues, and bodies of the zun
handle figures, for example, were all cast separately,
then soldered together. They were attached to the
body of the vessel by digging sockets into the appendages,
which were fitted over tongues protruding
from the vessel. Analysis of the solder used to fix
the four monsters to the foot of the zun has established
that it contained 53 percent tin, 41 percent
lead, and 2 percent copper. 4
While many of the individual elements were
probably cast using the traditional ceramic sectionmold
technique, the bands of openwork at the
mouth of the zun and pan represented a much
sterner challenge. This discontinuous "surface" of
this multilayered openwork is formed of individual
C- and S-curls, each supported by one or more
stalks rising from a mesh below. The intricacy of
this openwork would most certainly have required
the use of a fusible model such as wax. The lost-wax
method of casting had been used in China's border
regions as early as the Shang period, but it began
to be exploited for vessel ornaments only in the
seventh century BCE. S The technique was most advanced
in the Chu state, as demonstrated by a midsixth-century
BCE vessel stand (/in) that makes
extensive use of the technique. 6 The delicacy of the
filigree work on the zun-pan f however, far surpasses
that on the jin and represents the apogee of lostwax
casting as an ornamental technique.
While the vessel would undoubtedly have been
valued for its technical virtuosity, it is likely that the
ornamentation held symbolic meanings as well. The
clambering amphibian figures with bifurcated tails
that clench the rim of the pan in their jaws seem to
derive from the serpent-devouring-frog motif common
on bronzes south of the Yangzi River; such
figures occur intermittently in Chu woodcarving as
well. 7 Although the creatures cannot be identified
with any zoological or iconographic certainty, they
can be read as three-dimensional counterparts of
the creatures painted on the sides of Marquis Yi's
coffin; these undoubtedly fulfilled a religious role. 8
The vessel is one of a small number of bronzes
from the tomb that were apparently not made for
Marquis Yi himself. Beneath the inscription in the
pan that identifies the object as commissioned by
the marquis, an earlier, partly erased inscription
names a different Zeng figure — Marquis Yu —
285 ZENCHOU YI TOMB AT LEICUDUN