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A RARE PAIR OF UNUSUAL COWRIE SHELL AND GILT-BRONZE ‘STAG’ MAT WEIGHTS, WESTERN HAN DYNASTY
奥地利
2024年06月28日 开拍
拍品描述
A RARE PAIR OF UNUSUAL COWRIE SHELL AND GILT-BRONZE ‘STAG’ MAT WEIGHTS, WESTERN HAN DYNASTY

China, 207 BC-9 AD. Each with a brown-speckled cowrie shell depicting a deer’s body mounted and fitted into a cast bronze flat mount, with four tab-like feet in the form of folded and tucked deer legs, below flanges to secure the shell, a deer head with antlers opposite a rounded flange with incised details depicting a tail. (2)

Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 26 November 1991, lot 235. Private collection of Gerard Arnhold (1918-2010), S?o Paulo, Brazil, acquired from the above and thence by descent. Each base with a label ‘W 77’. George Gerard Arnhold was a German-Brazilian entrepreneur whose contributions to the arts include serving as the president of the Dresden Philharmonic Society and supporting the Dresden State Art Collections.
Condition: Overall good condition, commensurate with age. Extensive wear, nicks, scratches, dents, small losses, repairs to the antlers and flanges, small cracks, and casting flaws. The bronze with a fine, naturally grown patina with malachite encrustations.

Weight: 440 g and 465.6 g
Dimensions: Length 10.7 cm and 10.5 cm

Mat weights are believed to have been made in sets of four, such as the set of four gilt-bronze and cowrie shell tortoise-form weights found in pairs in each of two coffins in a double burial in a Western Han tomb in Hunyan, Shanxi province. See Wenwu, 1980:6, p. 51, fig. 27 (one of four). These weights were filled with lead to give them additional weight. The entry for the set of four notes that the word for deer, lu, is a homonym for wealth, and that cowrie shells, since ancient times, had been used as currency. Also, the brown spots of the cowrie shell may be seen to allude to the sacred spotted deer which ferrets out lingzhi, the fungus of immortality.

Literature comparison:
Compare a related example lacking the antlers, illustrated in Ausstellung Chinesischer Kunst, Berlin, 1929, p. 60, no. 84. Compare a pair of similar stag-form mounts (minus the cowrie shell body) from the collection of Carl Kempe illustrated by O. Karlbeck, 'Selected Objects from Ancient Shou-Chou', B.M.F.E.A., Stockholm, 1955, No. 27, pl. 45, fig. 4 (a&b).

Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Nagel Auction Stuttgart, 6 December 2022, lot 276
Price: EUR 28,000 or approx. EUR 29,500 adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A rare and finely cast gilt-bronze mounted cowrie shell stag mat weight, Han dynasty
Expert remark: Compare the closely related gilt bronze mount. Note the related size (9.2 cm) and that this lot comprises only one weight.

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拍品估价:3,000 - 6,000 欧元 起拍价格:3,000 欧元  买家佣金: 35.00%

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