商 青銅爵|Wine warmer (Jue)

Overview Wine warmer (Jue) China ca. 16th century BCE Not on view Every ancient Chinese bronze thus far discovered was cast using a complex pottery section-mold—a Chinese invention. But this vessel’s shape—angular, with a thin-walled body, a rim that appears “folded over,” and a “strap” handle—implies an earlier hammered sheet-metal mode of manufacture that might have been introduced from western Asia, where bronze metallurgy developed two thousand years before it appeared in China.