Animating Bronze: Gong Wine Vessels in the Late Shang Dynasty

BY LIU YANG

THE GONG, exemplified by an outstanding vessel in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) (1), is a ritual wine container that emerged as a distinctive bronze form during the late Shang period (circa 1300–1046 BC) and continued in use into the early Western Zhou (circa 1046–circa 771 BC). Employed primarily in ancestral sacrifices and other religious ceremonies, the gong is conceived as a lidded pouring ewer. Its body is typically oval or rectangular, with an asymmetrical mouth: one side rises to form a U-shaped spout, while the opposite side descends to support a semicircular handle. A fitted lid, often sculpted as an animal head, crowns the spout, creating a dynamic interplay between functional shape and symbolic presence.

Late Shang bronze gong vessels can be broadly divided into two formal categories, distinguished by the relationship between the vessel body and its support: vessels with three or four legs and vessels with a continuous ring foot.

These examples in the first category, tripod or quadruped gong, adopt an explicitly zoomorphic conception, with the lid and main body together forming the bulk of the animal and the legs completing the figure, as exemplified by an ox-shaped gong with naturalistic legs excavated in 1977 in Hengyang, Hunan (2), and by another fantastic gong with stylised body and legs in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC (3). Vessels in the second category, ring-foot gong, all assume a pouring ewer-like silhouette with a continuous base, a raised spout that merges with the forward lid to form an animal head, and a handle at the rear. These can be further divided into oval and rectangular subtypes. The rectangular form appears only in the very latest phase of the Shang, whereas the oval version spans the entire developmental history of the gong and is the most common in both excavated and surviving examples.

Earlier discussions by scholars, such as Max Loehr, Hayashi Minao, Robert Bagley and Jessica Rawson, have traced aspects of this evolution, with Loehr even proposing a chronological sequence from late Shang to early Western Zhou. However, their treatments are often either too condensed or insufficiently precise to establish a persuasive developmental framework. The present article therefore re-examines the gong, with a focus on the ring-foot gong, through formal analysis, inscriptional evidence and the most recent archaeological discoveries, aiming to propose a more robust and reliable chronology for the emergence and transformation of this iconic ritual vessel during the late Shang period.

It is commonly assumed that the earliest gong vessels with ring-shaped bases are the four examples excavated from the tomb of Fu Hao, who died circa 1200 BC; these pieces are therefore dated to the late 13th century BC. However, a closer examination of surviving gong vessels reveals that examples predating those from Fu Hao’s tomb do, in fact, exist.

The gong from the British Museum (height 23 cm, width 30 cm) (4a, 4b), is a striking example of late Shang craftsmanship and sculptural imagination. It maintains the basic outline familiar to later gong forms — an elongated body on an oval foot — but its structure and proportions suggest an earlier stage of development. Unlike later examples where the vessel wall rises curvedly, the neck here contracts inward, giving the body the appearance of a stretched, oval-section zun vessel that has been modified and sharply cut along the rim to form a sloping pour.

The lid is conceived as a composition of two animal heads oriented in opposite directions, each with bold, upturned horns shaped like inverted C-forms. These heads are connected by a raised central flange, from which a pair of coiled serpent-dragon creatures unfold along the spine. Their bodies are patterned with diamond motifs and rest on a dense leiwen (key-fret) background. The handle is especially notable: the upper section forms a dragon head with bottle-shaped horns, jaws gripping the C-shaped handle loop. The body of this creature splits and wraps around the neck, its tail curling downwards into a spiral near the spout. Triangular in profile like some Middle Shang prototypes — comparable to the bronze gui from Panlongcheng, such as the PLZM1:5 example from Lijiazui — the handle retains echoes of regional traditions while integrating into a new vessel type.

The most compelling ornamentation appears on the belly, where side-facing kui dragons extend along the long axis of the vessel, oriented towards the handle. Each creature is constructed in three stacked registers — upper, middle and lower — composed of geometric panels. These forms are delineated by broad, shallow relief lines without any background texture, creating a clean visual field that emphasises structure over density. The eyes, set within the sockets, are pushed outwards to the very corner of the head, even projecting beyond the orbital boundary. Both the handling of the ornament and the outward-projecting eyes are characteristic markers of mid-Shang style. The vessel’s form and ornament strongly suggest a date in the early reign of King Wuding, corresponding to Yinxu Phase I (circa 1250–1220 BC). This phase assignment draws on the well-established periodisation of Yinxu Phases I–IV, used by Chinese archaeologists to define the burial and bronze culture that developed at Yinxu, the capital of the late Shang. The vessel appears to capture a moment of invention, when artisans elongated the section of a folded shoulder zun, sliced the rim on a diagonal, fitted animal form lids and a side handle, and in doing so, generated the earliest iteration of the gong.

The second developmental stage of the gong is represented by two distinctive vessel types unearthed in 1976 from the tomb of Fu Hao at Yinxu, Anyang, datable to the early period of Yinxu Phase II (circa 1220–1174 BC), corresponding to the late reign of Wuding (circa 1220–1192 BC). One type, exemplified by M5:802 (height 22 cm, length 28.4 cm) (5), displays a striking dual-animal conception similar to that seen on the British Museum gong. The lid and body fuse to create two opposed creatures: a powerful crouching feline with upright horns at the front, its massive torso and limbs reaching down into the ring foot, and an owl figure at the rear, head lifted towards the sky, its wings spreading across the vessel’s surface with talons likewise descending into the foot. A raised central flange joins feline and owl, reinforcing the sculptural unity. The semicircular handle is equally elaborate, modelled as a single animal with an arched body and folded forelegs, whose elongated torso forms the upper and lower curves of the grip.

A second type of gong from the Tomb of Fu Hao differs strikingly from the previously discussed examples. In example M5:327 (height 18.2 cm, width 22.8 cm) (6), the vessel embodies a non-cooperative composition between lid and body: although the lid still terminates in an animal head, its horns are bottle-shaped rather than C-shaped, and the spout below no longer depicts a corresponding animal torso. Instead, the body’s ornamentation operates as an independent decorative system. A horizontal band encircles the midsection, while three vertical flanges — at the front and the two flanks — together with the semicircle cular handle at the rear, partition the vessel into four zones. The two central panels each display a large animal mask; beneath the rim, one section bears a long-snouted dragon, while the other features a backward-turning kui creature, further emphasising the vessel’s self-contained, non-zoomorphic structure.

These two contrasting approaches to the design of gong vessels — one fully zoomorphic, the other formally independent in ornament and form — appear to have enjoyed considerable popularity during Yinxu Phase II. Among the front-tiger, rear-owl type, several surviving examples in both public and private collections can be grouped together iconographically, suggesting that they were produced within the same period and perhaps even within the same workshop tradition. These include a gong in the collection of the Sen-oku Hakuko Kan, Kyoto; another in the Harvard Art Museums; a gong formerly in the collection of Captain S.N. Ferris Luboshez; and an example once owned by the Japanese collector, Sengoku Tadashi.

In contrast, gong vessels in which the lid and body are conceived as independent decorative systems — where the body is divided into distinct zones dominated by large animal mask motifs — are noticeably rarer in this period. A gong in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum (72.163a–b) (height 16.5 cm, width 21.6 cm) is very close in overall form and decorative design to the Fu Hao gong (M5:327). The higher relief of its decoration and the presence of star shaped ornaments at the terminals of the bottle-shaped horns both place its manufacture after Yinxu Phase II. The only securely identified example of this type is the gong for merly in the Alfred Pillsbury collection and now preserved in the Mia (height 17.7 cm, width 25 cm) (1, 7a, 7b, 7c).

When compared with the Fu Hao examples, the similarities in overall form and primary decorative layout are striking. Both employ a lid terminating in an animal head with bottle-shaped horns, a pair of bulging eyes, and naturalistically rendered features, such as rounded ears and a jagged, saw-toothed mouth. The distinction lies in the construction of the lid. On the Pillsbury gong, the front is articulated as a dragon head with bottle-shaped horns; its diamond-scaled body winds rearwards across the centre of the lid, curling into a spiral at the oval back. The dragon’s spine simultaneously serves as a raised flange, unifying structure and ornament. On the Fu Hao tomb example, by contrast, the same dragon extends only a short distance towards the rear before its body is interrupted and overlapped by a smaller dragon. The latter’s head and coiling torso rise in an arch, forming a carrying handle — an element absent from the Pillsbury lid.

The vessel body of both pieces is divided horizontally and vertically into clearly defined panels, each filled with large animal mask motifs and dragon forms. At the front, a long-snouted dragon follows the curve of the spout, while the ring foot on both vessels is ornamented with limb and eye patterns.

A single-character inscription is cast inside the lid and on the interior bottom. The inscription cast inside the main body shows three human figures in profile, holding between them what appears to be a standard or banner (7d). This character appears in many vessels of the late Shang period and has been interpreted as being equivalent to the modern character lü 旅. The character on the lid appears to be only the finial part of the banner (7e). An alternative interpretation, however, considers it the abridged sign of lü 旅. If that is the case, it is a rare and perhaps the only instance that one of a pair of inscriptions on the same vessel is in the abridged form. The craftsman who made the mould of this vessel used the abridged form, as he knew it was sufficient.

While some scholars have suggested that the Pillsbury gong is contemporary with the Fu Hao gongs, others…

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