Hollow-Legged Tripod (Li Ding)
late 900 BCE
- Medium
- bronze
- Classification
- Metalwork
- Dimensions
- Diameter: 27.7 cm (10 7/8 in.); Overall: 23 cm (9 1/16 in.)
- Culture
- China, Shaanxi province, Xi'an, Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–771 BCE)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Gift from various donors by exchange and the John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This food vessel exhibits a new decorative trend of metropolitan Western Zhou foundries. Zoomorphic images became increasingly abstract and subject to linear elaboration. The dominating animal mask (taotie) of the Shang is here transformed, dissolved, and dissected into intricate patterns of curving bands and median grooves. The design is abstract but not devoid of symbolic contents and functions. A smooth and even gray-green patina--the result of natural corrosion during burial--covers the outside and creates a new visual impact on the surface decoration.
