A LARGE AND INSCRIBED BRONZE ARROW VASE, TOUHU, YUAN DYNASTY

Expert’s note:
Inscribed touhu vases from the Yuan or even Ming dynasty are exceedingly rare, with not a single example appearing on the Western auction market in recent times.

China, 1279-1368. Heavily cast, of hexagonal form, the flattened rounded sides rising from a stepped pedestal base to a long cylindrical neck, flanked by a pair of tubular handles at the rim, the body with six protruding flanges alternating with scalloped panels with a reticulated cash-coin design and rabbits, four with raised seal script characters, the neck decorated with a crane and pheasant, further decorated with a wide band of diaper patterns at the rim, and a band of stiff leaves above the foot.

Inscriptions: To four of the sides, ‘yong […] ming jiao’, ‘[…] si […] chun’, ‘zhong zheng wu […]’, and ‘[…] yan […]’.

Provenance: Collection of J. E. & A. Lindberg, Swedish husband-and-wife missionaries who lived in Shandong province between1892 and 1946. A private collection in Sweden, gifted from the above in the 1930s, and thence by descent in the same family.
Condition: Very good condition, commensurate with age, showing expected ancient wear and casting irregularities, few nicks, light scratches, minor dents, some corrosion. The body and neck cast separately and joined together, with the neck now somewhat loose. The baseplate lost. The bronze overall with a rich, naturally grown, dark patina with few small malachite encrustations.

Weight: 8.8 kg
Dimensions: Height 50.2 cm

Arrow vases were made for a drinking game called 'touhu', which had been popular among elite men and women from the Spring and Autumn period. Players threw arrows into bronze or ceramic vases with narrow tubular necks at prescribed intervals, each player equidistant from the vase. The winner successfully projected all his arrows into the vase and the loser was forced to drink at each miss. Elaborate rituals and intricate rules, recorded in the Li Ji (Book of Rites), added further complexity to the game. Puzzling pitching techniques were described in the Touhu Yijie (Ceremonial Usages and Rules of Touhu), an illustrated manual written by Wang Ti (1490-1530), and these shots were given fancy names, like ‘A Pair of Dragons Enters the Sea’ when two arrows were thrown from a great height at once into the vase. The touhu game was used to practice archery, one of the essential accomplishments of a gentleman. Later in the Ming era, the game became more widespread and was played by rich merchants as well as the aristocracy and scholarly elite. A scene in the famous late Ming novel Jin Ping Mei (Plum Blossom in the Golden Vase), written in 1619, describes the wealthy merchant Ximen Qing's seduction of his concubine Panjinlian. She becomes inebriated while playing touhu on a picnic and the game leads to an amorous encounter. For a further discussion of the game see Isabelle Lee, 'Touhu: Three Millennia of the Chinese Arrow Vase and the Game of Pitch-pot', Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 56, 1991-2, pp. 13-7.

Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Sotheby’s London, 7 November 2018, lot 81
Price: GBP 12,500 or approx. EUR 20,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A large archaistic bronze arrow vase, Yuan dynasty
Expert remark: Compare the closely related form, manner of casting, and size (49 cm). Note the lack of any inscriptions.