The culture of Chinese Bronze Sculpture
The culture and art of antique Chinese bronze sculpture should be represented by ones in the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The variety of their categories, the magnificence of shape, the elegance of the decoration, the excellence of the casting, the profound and creative ideas are all unique in Bronze Age. Its brilliant achievements have epoch-making contributions and merits in promoting the evolution and progress of world civilization. Museums and galleries around the world, without exceptions, take the collection of Chinese bronze sculpture as a significant vessel. Furthermore, the collectors of successive dynasties have considered the bronze sculpture as a home-guarding and pass it from generation to generation. The artistic realm Chinese bronze sculpture achieved could be called unprecedented. It is not only the treasure of our culture as well as the world’s a brilliant pearl in art history.
When exactly the Chinese bronze sculpture came into being has no accurate proof, but large amounts of data shows that the invention of crafts of bronze sculpture originated 6600 years ago in Yangshao era and inherited and developed by the Longshan period. In ruins of Yangshao and Longshan culture, impure brass and copper wares have been found. From then on, China has entered into the civilization time with the coexistence of copper and stone. Anyhow, China officially got into the Bronze Age in about 2000 BC and lasted through the Xia, Shang, Western Zhou Dynasty and Spring and Autumn period about 15 centuries. To the late Warring States, the high level of bronze smelting has fulfilled its mission due to the rise of the iron foundry industry.
According to legend, Yu (a great politician in ancient China and be famous for harnessing the Yellow river) had use the tribute from the nine states to cast nine dings which symbolize the nine states. Each ding, a piece of china bronze sculpture is engraved with a state’s name as a national heirloom. In 1974 unearthed a bronze jue(爵) in the Erlitou relic of Yanshi in Henan province. Although modeling and crafts all were characterized by considerable primitiveness, but its emergence confirms the possibility that Yu did produced nine dings. This jue has become the earliest sacrificial bronze sculpture until now in the history of China.
From the view of shapes and decorations of the discovered bronze sculpture, they have exhibited respective style and characteristic in different periods from the Xia to the Western Zhou Dynasty, Spring and Autumn, Warring States Period until the Qin and Han. In each period, they all have inheritance, evolution and development mutually, further forming the outstanding and distinctive bronze artworks. In the history of China’s bronze art, there have been two peaks: one is the late Shang Dynasty, and the other is the period of the Warring States. The bronze sculpture in late Shang Dynasty whose quality and quantity had an unprecedented development and improvement. They are well-made, over elaborately decoration, weird model and colorful and rich patterns that have all reflected that the people in Shang extremely advocated the mysterious atmosphere of ghost. While the china bronze sculpture in Warring States period was rich in strong flavor of everyday life and concentrated on practical but were ingenious, brilliant, luxurious yet graceful at the same time. The inscriptions during that time had involved from the bold and unstrained coarse flower into neat and small flower. They tend to direct into patterning without mysterious color. In the production process, the most prominent are the invention and applications of the skills of gold-silver-inlaid, embedded copper, gold-silver-overlaid and other methods.
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