Xiasi

Eastern Zhou (Chou) cemetery site in southwestern Honan province, China. Nine large tombs, five chariot burials, and 16 lesser tombs have been excavated. More than 200 bronze ritual vessels and bells were found in the large tombs and represent Chu bronzecasting. The Xiasi bronzes include the earliest cire perdue castings yet known from China, used to cast the openwork parts of a bronze table and the flamboyant handles, feet, and lid knobs of vessels. Dates are 6th century BC.

[Hsia-ssu]. An Eastern Zhou cemetery site in Xichuan Xian, southwestern Henan province, China. Nine large tombs, five chariot burials, and 16 lesser tombs were excavated here in 1978. The major finds are all roughly contemporary with Tomb No. 2, whose owner is believed on the evidence of inscribed bronzes to be a minister of the Chu state who died in 552 bc. More than 200 bronze ritual vessels and bells were found in the large tombs and represent Chu bronzecasting of a stage that hitherto was little known since no other tomb or hoard of this early date is firmly connected with the state of Chu. Comparison with the Xiasi finds suggests that bronzes from slightly earlier and later tombs at Xinzheng and Sui Xian belong to a distinctive Chu artistic tradition even though they cannot be so directly associated with Chu personages. The Xiasi bronzes include the earliest cire perdue castings yet known from China, antedating by a century or so the spectacular examples from Sui Xian (tomb dated o433 bc). At Xiasi the lost-wax method was used to cast the openwork parts of a bronze table from Tomb No. 2 and the flamboyant handles, feet and lid knobs of otherwise sober vessels — the intricate decorative appendages of objects cast in section moulds. This diffident use of the method, far removed from the virtuosity displayed in the Sui Xian bronzes, might be taken to suggest that in the 6th century bc lost-wax casting was still new and not quite fully assimilated.