13th Dec, 2023 13:00
Fine Asian Art Holiday Sale
94
AN ORDOS BRONZE ‘COPULATING STAGS’ PLAQUE, EASTERN ZHOU
Sold for €715
including Buyer's Premium
China, Inner Mongolia, Ordos, 7th-6th century BC. The plaque cast in openwork with two stags copulating, one mounting the other from behind, both with stylized antlers as tangent circles.
Provenance: London trade. This lot comes from an antique shop owner from the north of England. His store sells all kinds of antiques, so he gets people coming in with unusual objects all the time, and he has been keeping and collecting Chinese works of art that he particularly likes for a long time.
Condition: Good condition with wear and casting irregularities. Minuscule nicks, some scratches, and soil encrustations. The bronze with a rich, naturally grown patina with malachite and cuprite encrustations.
Weight: 17 g
Dimensions: Length 3.8 cm
According to E.C. Bunker (see reference below): “Copulating animals occur on artifacts belonging to the non-Chinese peoples that inhabited northern China and Inner Mongolia, particularly areas where hunting was a major element in the local economy. The animals, which include leopards, wild pigs, and deer, are always wild, not domesticated.”
The two stags in the present piece, as evidenced by their antlers (which female deer do not have), appear to be an example of homosexual behavior in animals, a widely known fact today which, despite being ignored by Western researchers until relatively recently, could have easily been observed by the nomadic hunter societies at the time. Another theory for this unusual representation is that the original owner of this plaque used it to (perhaps discreetly) indicate his sexual preference to others.
Literature comparison:
E.C. Bunker, Ancient Bronzes of the Eastern Eurasian Steppes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, New York 1997, p. 166, no. 71.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Near identical
Auction: An Ordos bronze ‘copulating stags’ plaque, Eastern Zhou
Price: EUR 1,896 or approx. EUR 2,300 adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: An Ordos bronze ‘copulating stags’ plaque, Eastern Zhou
Expert remark: Note the size (4 cm).
China, Inner Mongolia, Ordos, 7th-6th century BC. The plaque cast in openwork with two stags copulating, one mounting the other from behind, both with stylized antlers as tangent circles.
Provenance: London trade. This lot comes from an antique shop owner from the north of England. His store sells all kinds of antiques, so he gets people coming in with unusual objects all the time, and he has been keeping and collecting Chinese works of art that he particularly likes for a long time.
Condition: Good condition with wear and casting irregularities. Minuscule nicks, some scratches, and soil encrustations. The bronze with a rich, naturally grown patina with malachite and cuprite encrustations.
Weight: 17 g
Dimensions: Length 3.8 cm
According to E.C. Bunker (see reference below): “Copulating animals occur on artifacts belonging to the non-Chinese peoples that inhabited northern China and Inner Mongolia, particularly areas where hunting was a major element in the local economy. The animals, which include leopards, wild pigs, and deer, are always wild, not domesticated.”
The two stags in the present piece, as evidenced by their antlers (which female deer do not have), appear to be an example of homosexual behavior in animals, a widely known fact today which, despite being ignored by Western researchers until relatively recently, could have easily been observed by the nomadic hunter societies at the time. Another theory for this unusual representation is that the original owner of this plaque used it to (perhaps discreetly) indicate his sexual preference to others.
Literature comparison:
E.C. Bunker, Ancient Bronzes of the Eastern Eurasian Steppes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, New York 1997, p. 166, no. 71.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Near identical
Auction: An Ordos bronze ‘copulating stags’ plaque, Eastern Zhou
Price: EUR 1,896 or approx. EUR 2,300 adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: An Ordos bronze ‘copulating stags’ plaque, Eastern Zhou
Expert remark: Note the size (4 cm).
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