Beschreibung:

An extremely rare pair of archaic bronze ritual food vessels (Ding)Late Shang dynasty商末 子龔鼎一對 each finely cast with the deep U-shaped body rising from three tall cylindrical legs to an everted rim surmounted by a pair of upright handles, crisply decorated around the exterior with three pairs of taotie masks against a leiwen ground, each detailed with bulging eyes and centered by a vertical flange, all above a row of pendent cicada motifs, both vessels cast to the interior with a two-character inscription in mirror image reading Zi Gong, the surface with light malachite encrustation (2)銘文：子龔 Height 6½ in., 16.5 cm