the serpent and the bull. These two last in later pieces combine
to form the dragon, representing the power of the air. In the Chow
dynasty libation vessels were also made in the form of a deer, a ram or
a rhinoceros. These characteristics are shown in figures 9-17, Plate II.
Fig. 9 is a temple vessel of a shape still in use, but which must date
from before 1000 B.C. With this massive piece may be contrasted the
flower-like wine vase shown in fig. 10, a favourite shape which is the
prototype of some of the most graceful forms of Chinese porcelain and
Japanese bronze. Its date is about 1000 B.C. The large wine vase shown
in fig. 11 is some 400 years later. On the body appears the head of the
tao-tieh, on the handles are superbly modelled serpents. The technique,
which in the previous pieces was somewhat rude, has now become perfect,
yet the menacing majestic feeling remains. We see it no less clearly in
fig. 12, a marvellous vessel richly inlaid with gold and silver and
covered with an emerald-green patina. It may date from about 500 B.C.,
and indicates that even in this remote epoch the Chinese were not only
daring and powerful artists but also master-craftsmen in metal.

It is indeed at this period that the art reaches its climax. The
monumental grandeur of the Shang specimens is often allied to
clumsiness; the later work, if more elaborate, is always less powerful.
Nevertheless, it is to a later period that ninety-nine out of a hundred
Chinese bronzes must be referred, and the great majority belong either
to the Han and succeeding dynasties (220 B.C.-A.D. 400), or to the
Renaissance of the arts which culminated under the Ming dynasty a
thousand years later.

The characteristics of the first of these periods is the free use of
small solid figures of animals as decoration--the phoenix, the elephant,
the frog, the ox, the tortoise, and occasionally men; shapes grow less
austere and less significant, as a comparison between figures 11 and 13
will indicate; then towards the end of the 2nd century A.D. the
influence of Buddhism is felt in the general tendency towards suavity of
form (fig. 14). This vase is most delicately though sparingly inlaid
with silver and a few touches of gold. Some small pieces, very richly
and delicately inlaid and covered with a magnificent emerald-green
patina, belonging to this period, form a connecting link between the
inlaid work of the Chow dynasty and that of the Sung and Ming dynasties.
Th