Research on the Bronze of the Spring and Autumn Period

The bronze in the Eastern Zhou era blossomed in a historical turning point that the slave-owning aristocracy declined and fell little by little and the burgeoning landlord class officially stepped on the arena of history. Socio-economic and cultural development and the balance of class forces all have a profound reflection in the bronze sculpture foundry industry. The primary consumptive subjects of bronze in Shang and Western Zhou are the royal nobleman and ministers and, at this time when the vassal states contended to cast bronze sculptures. Not only the big vassal states like Jin, Chu, Qi, Lu, Wu and Yue, even the small ones have their own bronze foundry industry, such as, Xu, Jiang, Huang, Ying, Du, Deng Cai, Xu, Chen, Xi, Xue, Qi, Zhu, Dai, Dan and Yu all have bronze sculptures excavated.

In recent decades, with the development of archeology, there have been many important discoveries of the bronze belonging to the Eastern Zhou era. For instance, in the 1955, hundreds of bronze statue had been discovered in the Caihou Tomb in Shou County of Anhui province, including ritual vessels, daily life appliances, musical instruments, weapons, chariots, etc. In the graves of the Spring and Autumn located in the Zhongzhou Road of Luoyang, Henan province between the year 1954 and 1955 unearthed containers, weapons, implements and clothing and son on. In 1957, in the tomb of State Chu in the Warring States in Chuangtaiguan, Xinyang, Henan, there were 13 sets of chime-bells among the resurrected bronze artifacts plus sacrificial vessels, daily utensils, painted mirrors, cutting bamboo tools and so on.

The tomb of Marquis Yi of the Zeng State in 1978 at the Sui County of Hubei had a total number of more than 10,000 pieces of cultural relics, of which had about 140 pieces of ritual vessels and equipments, and a great deal of weapons and chariots. The most famous bronze found in this tomb is the 64 pieces of chime-bells weighs up to 2567 kg. The general characteristics of the chinese bronze sculptures in Eastern Zhou Dynasty are the large quantity bronze and various species related to many types of content. To the Spring and Autumn period, due to the frequent wars, the development of bronze weapons was relatively quickly and the Ge, spear, halberd, sword, and their attachments like dun and others were in vogue. One special is the precious sword in states of Wu and Yue, abnormal sharp and well-known in the world famous, came along with noted sword smith, such as Ganjiang, Ou Zhizi, etc.

After the mid-Warring States, consummate and amazing bronze fell to decay in a great extent. Most objects inclined to be daily use and many bronze mirrors began to show up. For example, the world’s first optical focusing lens can be seen records in historical literature. Based on the statement of The Book of Rites, it describes that the daughter-in-law every morning should bring the jinsui (literally a flint) with herself as well as other household tools and go to the parents’ extending greetings. The jinsui here is actually the early model of the optical focusing bronze mirror, also known as “Yang Sui” in ancient times but today is called the condenser, or concave mirror. Its purpose is to make fire and face it with the sun so that sunlight can pass through it and lit moxa stick or something like that to light a fire and cook.

In view of the decorations, other than the engraved pattern, there are fine gilt lines and knurling in the Spring and Autumn period. The crafts of inlay and enchase are extensively applied and even a small nation has quite advanced level of technology. Such as the north Zhongshan and Zeng State in Sui County of Hubei has been excavated with beautifully produced bronze. The utilization of inlay gets the bronze dragon an ornate artistic effect.

In the Warring States period, the decorative motif takes the scenes of social life as the chief theme, which is great change in the history of decorations on the bronze. The patterns wielded inlay or hollowed-out craft in the form of paintings consist of colorful scenes of life like the feast, banquet, dance, hunting, war, mulberry leaf harvest and brewing wine and so on. The celebrated hu (a type of bronze) with pictures of mulberry leaf harvest, banquets and land and water battles on it can be rated as the masterpiece in this type. From top to bottom, its body falls into two levels and each level is divided into two layers. The unique engraved lines and the way of silhouette give expression to various combat, shooting, rowing, mulberry picking, reward and other scenes.

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