Cambodia. Of elliptical cross-section, the tapering gong with a trumpet-shaped opening at the top, decorated to the exterior with spirals set in parallelograms in seven tiers.

Provenance: The collection of The Zelnik István Southeast Asian Gold Museum. Institutional art collection in Belgium, acquired from the above. Dr. István Zelnik, President of the Hungarian South and Southeast Asian Research Institute, is a former high-ranking Hungarian diplomat who spent several decades in Southeast Asia, building the largest known private collection of Asian art in Europe.
Condition: Fair condition, commensurate with age. Extensive wear, small losses, structural cracks, casting irregularities, encrustations particularly to the interior, old repairs and touchups. All as expected from a bronze bell with an age of roughly two millennia. The bronze with a fine, naturally grown patina with a lustrous dark hue.

Weight: 17.7 kg
Dimensions: Height 79 cm

This bronze bell from the Southeast Asian Bronze age, generally named after the Dong Son site in North Vietnam, is of particularly large size with a vivid and crisply cast swirling band design. The Kingdom of Funan (50 AD-627), located in mainland Southeast Asia covering parts of present-day Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam was Southeast Asia's first great economy and may have controlled the entire trade route from Malaysia to central Vietnam in the second century AD, which could explain why bells of this type have been found in Cambodia and Malaysia.

Literature comparison:
Compare a closely related bronze bell, found in Selangor, West Malaysia, dated 2^nd century BC, 58 cm high, in the British Museum, registration number 1949,0715.1. Compare a closely related bronze bell found in Kampung Pencu, Muar, Johor, dated around 150 AD, in the Muzium Negara, Kuala Lumpur.

Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s London, 30 January 2019, lot 87
Price: GBP 125,000 or approx. EUR 205,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A Cambodian bronze ceremonial bell, Battambang province, probably 2^nd century BC to 2^nd century AD
Expert remark: Compare the closely related form and decoration with similar raised spiral design enclosed within parallelograms. Note the size (57.8 cm).