A rare silver-inlaid bronze 'beast head' chariot ornament, Warring States period - Han dynasty

Chun Pou Tong, Macau, 18th June 1989.

Bronze beast head-form fittings of this type were used as chariot ornaments, as evidenced by two similar parcel-gilt bronze examples discovered inside the carriage remnants of a chariot from the tomb of the Prince of Qi of the Western Han dynasty in Linzi, Shandong province, published in Zibo Museum, 'Xihan Qiwangmu suizangqiwukeng [The Funerary Pits round the Princely Tomb of Qi Kingdom of the Western Han Dynasty]', Kaogu xuebao/Acta Archaeologica Sinica, vol. 2, Beijing, 1985, fig. 23-3. For other ornaments of the same type, see a silver-inlaid bronze example, modeled in the form of a similar feline head, from the Eastern Zhou period, 4th-3rd century B.C., exhibited in Ancient Chinese and Ordos Bronzes, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1990, cat. no. 104; another inscribed to the underside with two characters reading zuozheng, in the Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne, included in the exhibition Unearthing China's Past, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1973, cat. no. 16; a third exhibited in Chinese Archaic Bronzes, Sculpture and Works of Art, J.J. Lally & Co., New York, 1992, cat. no. 31; an undecorated example, attributed to the Han dynasty, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (accession no. 18.42.1); and another, sold by C.T. Loo in 1951 to Stephen Junkunc III and subsequently sold in these rooms, 10th September 2019, lot 201.