Zhou Dynasty Miniature Bronze Vessels

Miniature bronze boxes found in tombs dating from the Western Zhou to the Springs and Autumns Period (9th-7th c. BCE) of China have long been a focus of scholarly attention. These remarkably small objects are often highly sculptural, adorned with real or fantastical animals in the round, and sometimes supported by wheels or human figures. In their form, scale, decoration, and tomb placement, they differ significantly from the standardized ritual vessels central to Zhou ancestral practices. 

Some have proposed that they functioned as objects of purely visual interest, while others have suggested that they were used as jewelry boxes. The latter theory is supported by several boxes that have been found to contain jades. Recent physico-chemical analyses of the residues within miniature bronzes indicate that they occasionally contained cosmetic substances, further supporting their use in personal adornment and care. Notably, some of these substances were found in vessels from male tombs, suggesting they may have also been gender-neutral. 

In this paper, Lullo revisits the fascinating corpus of miniature bronze vessels and further pursue the theory that they were specially crafted as items that emphasize personal adornment of the face and body as significant markers of identity in death. She also considers possible parallels between these early bronze miniature boxes and later cosmetic boxes of the Warring States (475-221 BCE) through Han (206 BC-220 CE) periods, with special attention to forms, contents, and notions of gender.

Sheri A. Lullo is an associate professor of Asian art history and the director of Asian Studies at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Her research focuses on the material culture of personal adornment in China’s early dynasties. She has published articles on lacquered boxes for toiletries and on representations of clothing and hairstyles from the Warring States period through the Han dynasty (4th c. BCE-3rd c CE), and has co-edited the volume, The Art and Archaeology of Bodily Adornment  (Routledge, 2019). Her article on the life history of a Chinese stone lion from the collection at Union College was recently published in a special issue on “orphaned objects” in the journal Asian Studies.