![]() be viewed on the flat or concave bottoms of ding vessels. The Chinese believed in the afterlife and ancestral worship, and wanted their deceased relatives to have food and wine to sustain them on their onward journeys. The tripod was a bronze food container before it came to serve as an altar vessel on activities of sacrifice, declarations of war, and funerals. Actual condition means how much of the original is left and what its state of preservation is. ‘Bronzes were made for the very wealthy elite and were associated with power.’ The vessels, which were made to serve grain and wine, also played an important role in the ritual banquets that took place in family temples or over ceremonial tombs. ‘Chinese bronzes are absolutely central to Chinese civilization,’ the specialist continues. Some of these pieces will be displayed at King Street in London alongside works from the Michael Michaels Collection of Early Chinese Art, offered in our Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art sale on 7 November. ‘They have a magnificent presence, they’re very imposing,’ says Hunt. At the core of the collection, which spans more than 3,000 years, are Chinese archaic bronzes, dating from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC) all the way up to the Han Dynasty, which lasted from around 200 BC to 220 AD. Hunt is touring the superb collection of Chinese art at Compton Verney, an 18th-century house in Warwickshire, England. ‘Nothing can really prepare you for when you look close-up with your own eyes at pieces which have been handled as long ago as 1500 BC,’ says Christie’s Chinese Works of Art specialist Kate Hunt.
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