Chinese Bronze

Chinese ritual bronzes

From c. 1650 BC, elaborately decorated bronze vessels were deposited as grave goods in the tombs of royalty and nobility during the Chinese Bronze Age. Documented excavations have found over 200 pieces in a single royal tomb. They were produced for an individual or social group to use in making ritual offerings of food and drink to his or their ancestors and other deities or spirits. Such ceremonies generally took place in family temples or ceremonial halls over tombs. These ceremonies can be seen as ritual banquets in which both living and dead members of a family were supposed to participate. Details of these ritual ceremonies are preserved through early literary records. On the death of the owner of a ritual bronze, it would often be placed in his tomb, so that he could continue to pay his respects in the afterlife; other examples were cast specifically as grave goods. Indeed, many surviving examples have been excavated from graves.

Bronze

Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals and sometimes non-metals or metalloids. These additions produce a range of alloys some of which are harder than copper alone or have other useful properties, such as strength, ductility, or machinability.

Bronze (color)

Bronze is a metallic brown color which resembles the metal alloy bronze. An archaic term for it was aeneous.

bronze

Noun

1. A naturally occurring or man-made alloy of copper, usually in combination with tin, but also with one or more other metals.
2. A reddish-brown colour, the colour of bronze.

Adjective

1. Made of bronze metal.
2. Having a reddish-brown colour.