Eskenazi, one of the world’s leading dealers in Asian art, has selected eight stunning and sophisticated Chinese bronzes spanning two millennia for his annual exhibition that takes place at PaceWildenstein, 32 East 57^th Street, New York, from Monday 27 March to Saturday 8 April 2006.  The extremely rare and important pieces offered for sale range in date from the late Shang period, 12^th-11^th century BC, to the Tang period, 618-907 AD.  Eskenazi acquired these extraordinary and important Chinese bronzes over the last seven years and set them aside for his annual exhibition in New York which is always eagerly awaited by connoisseurs, collectors and museum curators. 

 An archaic wine vessel and cover (fang jia) is of a particularly rare shape in the repertory of Shang bronzes and is a superb example of impressive size, its subtle curves and fine, low-relief decoration requiring great expertise in the casting.  The rectangular vessel is supported on four powerful, splayed legs and has extraordinary bombé waisted sides rising to a flared rim set with two posts terminating in elaborate roof-shaped caps cast with animal masks.  One side is cast with a curved handle issuing from a bovine mask with curled horns and the whole is decorated with elaborate designs incorporating beasts and birds.  This extraordinary object made over 3,000 years ago is in remarkable condition.

 There are two unusual, small and exquisite bird-shaped garment hooks (daigou).  One made of bronze, gold, silver, jade and turquoise dates from the Warring States period, 475-221 BC, and is cast in the form of a phoenix with a dragon’s head hook.  The bird’s upright tail feathers are inlaid in turquoise, its body made from curved pieces of green glass, light green jade and turquoise and the chest, leg, claws and head are delicately inlaid with gold sheet and dots and silver wire forming overlapping feathers, while the dragon is similarly inlaid with gold and silver.

 The second garment hook is slightly later in date, Warring States-Western Han period, 3^rd-2^nd century BC.  A highly stylised long-beaked aquatic bird with a pear-shaped body and tightly furled wings is made in gilt and silvered bronze inlaid with turquoise.  The form of the piece, with the long beak of the bird used in a humorous way as the hook, is not uncommon but the geometrical turquoise inlay is unusually fine.

 A pair of gilt bronze and glass plaques from the Western Han period, 2^nd-1^st century BC almost certainly would have formed two sides of a head-rest.  Each plaque contains two rectangular sections of pale green glass resembling jade, now broken into several pieces.  The particularly attractive openwork gilt bronze is in the form of two sinuous dragons with wings spread, arranged as figures-of-eight around a central sharp-beaked bird also with open wings.  Details such as the dragons’ claws and birds’ beaks are finely and delicately cast and the use of glass rather than jade makes the plaques particularly rare.

 From the same period are ten bronze chariot fittings inlaid in gold and silver with patterns and cloud motifs and set with small pieces of agate and turquoise.  From the Shang period onwards, chariots appear to have played a major part in furnishing the tombs of people of high status, usually members of the royal household, which explains the elaborate and intricate decoration of such utilitarian items as rings for the reins, axle caps and a wheel guard amongst the fittings on view.  The evolution of chariot design can be mapped from the numerous metal parts that have been discovered in the tombs of the Shang to Han periods which span over a thousand years.  From the metal parts and the size of the skeletons of the horses buried with them, it is possible to reconstruct the size of the wooden wheels, shafts and yokes and the number of horses that drew the highly ornamented chariots.

 A beautifully decorated bronze and gold mirror dating from the Six Dynasties period, 3^rd-4^th century AD, is particularly unusual for its glass inlay.  The reverse of the mirror is cast with the animals of the four directions: the dragon for the east, phoenix for the south, tiger for the west and a tortoise and snake entwined for the north.  The characteristic details of each, for example the dragon’s scales and the carapace of the tortoise, are clearly shown and they are arranged around a central flower head.  The petals of the flower are formed by cloisons filled with blue, turquoise, white and transparent glass backed with gold foil and there is a band of further glass-filled cloisons surrounding the animals.

 A particularly dramatic piece is an extraordinarily vivid gilt bronze dragon cast with arched body and head turned back.  The lithe and powerful animal has front legs modelled as if grasping at a ledge to haul itself up, with one back leg clambering after the other.  It has bulging eyes, flared nostrils, large clawed paws, furled wings and a long, curling tail and is almost entirely covered with rich gilding.  This exquisitely modelled object is 46.5 cm long and was probably a fitting for an element of furniture or architecture.  Dating from the Western Han period, 1^st century BC, its remarkable ‘life-like’ quality seems to indicate that to the Han imagination the dragon was as real as any animal in the natural world.

 Dragons also feature in other spectacular pieces in the exhibition: a pair of gilt bronze supports, almost certainly the feet of an incense burner, from the Tang period, 618-907 AD.  Each is superbly cast in the form of a dragon’s head biting the leg of a lion with a five-sectioned paw tipped with long, sharp claws.  Both dragons have powerful heads with pairs of horns, bulging eyes with finely delineated eyebrows, open nostrils and mouths gaping to reveal fearsome teeth clamped tightly over the legs.  The workmanship is of superb quality and, given the height of the supports which are 24 cm each, the original vessel must have been particularly impressive when used during a Buddhist ritual.