Chinese museums, collectors set for fierce bidding on iconic bronze

The auction of an antique Chinese bronze ritual wine vessel at Christie’s Asian Art Week in New York next week has caught the attention of well-heeled collectors across China.

“It’s an iconic bronze masterpiece and extremely rare in the market. We are very interested in it. I believe aside from high-profile collectors, museums from China such as the National Museum of China and Shanghai Museum will also send representatives to the auction,” said Ji Chongjian, a Shanghai-based bronze expert and consultant with the National Museum of China.

The “Min” Fanglei, as the square bronze wine vessel from the 12th or 11th century BC is known, fetched a record US$9.2 million in its last appearance in March 2001 at Christie’s, when it was acquired by a French collector.

Along with a lid, the exquisite artefact, with its fine casting and inscription, is believed to have been unearthed in the early 1920s in the southern province of Hunan. However, the lid and the body of the vessel went to separate owners soon after its discovery, with the latter being taken out of China and featured in L’Art Chinois, published in 1928 by George Soulie De Morant. Over the years, the body of the vessel passed through the hands of some renowned dealers and collectors overseas. The lid, however, has been kept at the Hunan Provincial Museum since 1956.

There are different stories about how the vessel was excavated and even disagreement on whether the lid and body are one set. “I can assure you that the two are a set,” said Li Ye from the museum’s publicity office. But she did not want to say whether the museum would send experts to the auction next week to bid for the body of the bronze vessel and bring it back to China to make the set complete.

Ji, who used to work at the Shanghai Museum, also dismissed the suggestion that the lid and body were not one set. He recalled that when the director of the Shanghai Museum, Ma Chengyuan, visited Japan in the late 1980s and saw the body of the bronze vessel at the home of a Japanese collector, he felt that the two were one set. In 1992, the Japanese collector went to the Hunan museum and offered to build a well-equipped exhibition room and donate some ancient artefacts in exchange for the lid of the bronze vessel. But the proposal never came to fruition.