A rare miniature gold and silver-inlaid bronze vessel, gu Song – Ming dynasty | 宋至明 銅錯金銀蕉葉卷草紋出戟袖珍型觚

Spink & Son Ltd., London, 1990.

Spink & Son Ltd，倫敦，1990年

The Second Bronze Age. Later Chinese Metalwork, Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, 1991, cat. no. 37.

《The Second Bronze Age. Later Chinese Metalwork》，Sydney L. Moss Ltd，倫敦，1991年，編號37

Sydney L. Moss Ltd. and later Chinese Bronzes

Paul Moss

In 1991 Sydney L. Moss Ltd. published “The Second Bronze Age: Later Chinese Metalwork”, an exhibition catalogue whose time we felt had come. We had managed to gather together a coherent group for a focused show, including its fair share of star works. It was quite a successful foray.

At that time we had recently experienced London dealer Michael Goedhuis’ 1989 show of Chinese and Japanese bronzes, and Rose Kerr’s 1990 book for the Victoria & Albert Museum, “Later Chinese Bronzes”. Discussions about metalwork hung heavy in the air. Prior to that activity, though, we had concentrated quite some attention on the material in our first exhibit of literati arts, 1983’s “In Scholars’ Taste”, with its essay by Ulrich Hausmann, “In Search of Later Bronzes”, and our 1986 “The Literati Mode”, with another fine Hausmann essay, the first and I think only discussion of Chinese copper-bronze handwarmers in English: “Keeping Warm in a Cold Study: The Warmer”. I recommend both essays, which have so far stood the test of time. All our Chinese art catalogues not restricted to painting and calligraphy - over the last 38 years - include later bronzes which we found original and individual, characteristics we have always prized over the classic.

It was our long-term association with Ulrich Hausmann that sharpened our intuitive attraction to what was evidently a wildly underrated area of literati works of art. His was and still is by far the most sophisticated approach to such material that we had come across, and I for one was extremely impressed by his insistence that the best later bronzes, as opposed to the merely decorative, were to be considered an organic literati material, with a “skin”. For many years we stored in a cupboard in our (then) Brook Street W1 gallery two entire collections of the “Song to Ming” type flower vessels – Ulrich’s and another – thinking with the encouragement of the owners to produce a reference work on them. To my regret, we never did; the values involved were not sufficient to cover the publication of a worthwhile book. But we learned a lot, meantime.

That same year, 1991, saw the emergence onto the international scene of a remarkable collector, Bob Kresko, of St. Louis (and Florida, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where my entire family went to visit the Kreskos one summer, my three sons convincingly dressed as cowboys). I learned only a little while ago that Bob passed away late last year, and I remain extremely sorry to hear it. He was an unusually uplifting and entertaining man, who supplied me with all my best jokes, and once he had a project he wasted no time or effort in putting it into practice. He instructed me to proactively go and buy for him all of the best later bronzes I could find; it was a liberation, like being unleashed. I have never enjoyed a plan coming together quite as much. Bob’s important criterion, apart from finesse and originality, was that his bronzes should be big and bold, or at least sprawl a little, and for that reason he passed up the opportunity to add a few exquisite gems of smaller stature. With that one proviso, he consistently bought everything special he was offered for over a decade, into the very early 2000s. It was a time when the New York auction market was giving up on classic old Chinese paintings, and that of the Chinese mainland had not yet started in earnest. I was delighted and relieved to have an area of endeavour with some prospect of unheard-of quality in which, if I didn’t know where every last masterpiece resided, at least I had a good idea of a few noteworthy doors to knock on. Again, I learned a great deal.

In 2008 the St. Louis Art Museum – which has long owned a stunning group of archaic Chinese bronzes – published Philip K. Hu’s “Later Chinese Bronzes - The Saint Louis Art Museum and Robert Kresko Collections”. It is an excellent book, with the proviso that, given Bob Kresko’s insistence on scale, they really needed to print it much bigger. If you read the book and then visit the collection you will be taken aback by the size and power of many of the star contenders. Other than that, the content is genuinely superior. To me, the material is of a different order altogether when compared with, for example, the 1993 Phoenix Art Museum publication on the Clague collection of later bronzes.

With Robert Kresko’s focus on cornering the market in fine, outsize later bronzes, especially vessels, we at Sydney L. Moss Ltd. decided in the early 1990s that we should discreetly put away all of our remaining “The Second Bronze Age” works against the happy day when they would all turn out to be rare, valuable and all the more historically significant for having been included in our early presentation of such things. To this end, we also bought back a modest handful of those we had sold from our exhibition. When Mr. Kresko stopped buying in the early 2000s, which took place upon the results of the mainland auction of Wang Shixiang’s collection being relayed to the Western world, we took it upon ourselves to determinedly acquire anything further we could find that qualified as extra-special. That is how the present selection came to be. We would (and probably will) persist with the ongoing slow growth of the group, because it’s more fun than any alternative; but I turn 70 in April, and my so-called semi-retirement becomes more of a reality, and while none of us is done yet, it feels like an appropriate time to clear the decks. Son and boss Oliver Moss is profoundly enthused by these works, but it is far from clear that current world availability will permit him to indulge as I did.

Not all of the Kresko later bronzes ended up in the St. Louis Art Museum; Sotheby’s Hong Kong offered several of them in 2016, just as it offered the pick of the Ulrich Hausmann collection in 2014. To us, those auctions represented the high point of serious availability of truly special later Chinese bronzes, and we envisage the current Sydney L. Moss Ltd. selection as not only a celebration of the impact of our 1991 “The Second Bronze Age” exhibition but also a logical extension of that focused intent. Please enjoy.

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The archaistic seal mark on the base appears to be part of a longer inscription, suggesting that the vessel may have been cut from an existing fragment. 

For comparable miniature bronze vessels all dated to the Song dynasty, see The Collection of Chinese Porcelain and Works of Art formed by the late George de Menasce OBE, Spink & Son Ltd, London, 1972, cat. nos 93-95, and Paul Singer in Early Chinese Miniatures, China Institute, New York, 1977, cat. nos 221-223.