A Study On The Form And Function Of Bronze Ware Collected In Baoji Bronze Museum

The bronze ware of the Zhou Dynasty is significant carrier of the Zhou Dynasty culture. The Zhou Dynasty bronze wares collected by the Baoji Bronze Ware Museum have plenty shapes, a great variety of types and outstanding quality. This essay aims at study the shapes, the evolution of engraved pattern and the social and culture functions of the Zhou Dynasty bronze wares collected by the Baoji Bronze Ware Museum, in order to have a perspective of style and characteristics of the Zhou Dynasty.In the early of the Zhou Dynasty, the bronze ware's shapes mainly inherit the Shang Dynasty's style. This is mainly because the Zhou Dynasty's social reform has just completed, has not formed its unique political and culture system. Although it has changes in this period, but has not formed its independent artistic style. From the late stage of the early Zhou Dynasty, with constant improvement of social culture system, the Zhou Dynasty people's moral and aesthetic mentality of advocate etiquette and revere virtue had established. So the style of the bronze wares have an obvious change, its shape becomes more practical and humanization, tend to be a dignified and easy, quiet and harmonious style. Its engraved pattern has also abandoned the beast engraved pattern's dreadful and ferocious style of the Shang Dynasty, instead, has changed to become realistic animal and abstract decorative engraved pattern. The engraved pattern has changed numerous for brief, more formal realistic and its style become simple and elegant. Due to the constant progress of the casting technology, as well as the development of social culture, the number of bronze wares of Zhou Dynasty with casted inscription have increased and the number of inscriptions have increased from several words to hundreds words, depended on this has formed its unique style of calligraphy art.The bronze ware is the tool that reflected and maintained the authority, status and material interests of aristocracy class. The Zhou Dynasty bronze wares have endowed with more important social and cultural functions. It also has the function of religious worship, but different from the Shang Dynasty strong religious worship, the religious worship of the Zhou Dynasty has reflected more humanistic feelings of respect to virtue, their ancestors and nature. The Zhou Dynasty bronze ware is the symbol of dominator's authority, status hierarchy and relationships, with the strengthen function of the patriarch clan system, added by the morality function of education of etiquette and music. Due to prosperous inscriptions of the Zhou Dynasty bronze ware, the bronze ware also has the function of recorded the history of wars, social life, law system and economic activities of the Zhou Dynasty. Depended on those practical functions, the Zhou Dynasty bronze ware also plays an important aesthetic function, its shape, engraved pattern and inscription has reached the peak of the ancient Chinese bronze art.