A rare Chinese gold and silver inlaid bronze tapir-form ritual vessel, xizun, Yuan/Ming...

A rare Chinese gold and silver inlaid bronze tapir-form ritual vessel, xizun, Yuan/Ming dynasty, finely cast in the form of a tapir standing foursquare with its mouth slightly open, the flared ears decorated with small triangles and the neck encircled with a collar, its body intricately inlaid with pattern of swirls and scrolls, the back of the hollowed body applied with a small hinged cover cast as a bird with curved wings, 36cm. long

Note: The shape and inlaid gold and silver decoration of this vessel are based on archaic prototypes from the middle of the Warring States period (475-221 BC). An excavated example from Jiangsu is now in the collection of the Nanjing Museum, is illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji Gongyi meishu bian - 5 - Qingtongqi (xia), Beijing, 1986, p. 126, no. 144. Archaistic vessels of the present type are the result of tremendous interest in ancient bronzes during the Northern Song period, and their popularity has continued into the Yuan, Ming and Qing periods. A Yuan dynasty example with gold and silver inlay from the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is illustrated in Through the Prism of the Past, Taipei, 2003, p. 186, no. III-55. Another example, in the Royal Ontario Museum, dated Yuan-Ming dynasty, is illustrated in Homage to Heaven, Homage to Earth, Toronto, 1992, p. 102, no. 53; another similar example, acquired by Henri Cernuschi in 1896, dated to the 16^th-early 17^th century, in the exhibition Bronzes de la Chine impériale des Song aux Qing, Musée Cernuschi, Paris, 2013, cat. no. 42, another dated Song dynasty from the collection of E. B. Ellice-Clark, illustrated in the Catalogue of a Collection of Objects of Chinese Art, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1915, pl. XXXV, was subsequently sold at Christies Paris, 12 June 2012, lot 286.

Other examples of similarly shaped and decorated zun that have been seen on the market are: A tapir-shaped zun of slightly larger size was sold at Christies New York, 22 March 2007, lot 162, previously in the collection of a former chairman of the Far Eastern Art Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; another tapir-shaped vessel dated to the Ming dynasty, 16^th-17^th century from the collection of Jeffrey M. Kaplan Collection was sold at Sothebys New York, 15 March 2017, lot 565; a third tapir-form zun dated to the Yuan-Ming dynasty and of slightly bigger size was sold at Christies New York, 25 September 2020, lot 1538.