Beschreibung:

A RARE GILT-BRONZE OPENWORK 'PHOENIX' CROWNLiao Dynasty
Delicately cut and chased with 'phoenix and cloud' design, the deep dome-shaped hat with a 'flaming pearl' finial, one side with three applied repoussé flaming pearls, the opposite side with a tall vertical wing patterned with rising phoenix amidst cloud scrolls, the borders finely chased with scrolling vines and repoussé with overlapping petals, with a malachite patina and earthen encrustations.
11 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 5 1/2 in (29.2 x 24.1 x 14cm)Footnotes遼 鎏金銅鳳雲紋高翅冠
Provenance:
Kaikodo, New York, 23 March 2000
Exhibited:
Beyond the Great Wall: Cultural Features of China's Cowboy Neighbors, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 22 November 2003 - 29 February 2004.
Published:
Bunker, Emma, Beyond the Great Wall: Cultural Features of China's Cowboy Neighbors (exhibition pamphlet), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2003, cover image
來源：
紐約懷古堂古董行，2000年3月23日
展覽：
Beyond the Great Wall: Cultural Features of China's Cowboy Neighbors，休斯敦美術館，2003年11月22日 - 2004年2月29日
出版：
Emma Bunker著，Beyond the Great Wall: Cultural Features of China's Cowboy Neighbors (導覽手冊)，休斯敦美術館，2003年，封面圖
Wang Chunyan in Liao dai jinyinqi janjiu [Research on Liao Dynasty Gold and Silver], Beijing, 2020, creates a taxonomy of Liao dynasty gilt-bronze and gilt-silver funereal crowns, with Type B crowns defined as those with an oval, domed central cap flanked on each of the long sides by a tall vertical wing typically designed with phoenix against an openwork ground. This form of crown has been consistently found on female Khitan nobles, and never on males (François Louis 'Shaping Symbols of Privilege: Precious Metals and the Early Liao Aristocracy', Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, no. 33 (2003), p. 96). Type B crowns are subdivided into Type B(a) which have a comparatively high dome that ascends nearly to the pinnacle of the wings, and Type B(b) crowns that have a comparatively lower dome (op. cit., pp. 87-88).
The present crown belongs to Type B(b). Other crowns of this classification include a gilt-bronze example from the Mengdiexuan Collection (ibid., p. 88, fig. 2-42-4), one in the collection of the Musée Guimet, Paris (inv. no. MA 6248) which is missing one of the vertical wings (ibid., p. 88, fig. 2-42-5), and one excavated in 2015 in M1 of Yelü Hongli's (1045-1096) tomb at Xiao Lama Gou, Lingyuan, Liaoning province (ibid., p. 88, fig. 2-42-6). A fourth crown of this type, but with wider edges on the upright wings, is now in the Musée Cernuschi, Paris (acc. no. M. C. 2001-6), illustrated on the museum's website. While Wang notes that the crown excavated in Yelü Hongli's tomb may have some inaccuracies in its reconstruction, the examples in the Mengdiexuan Collection and the Paris museums follow the design of the present crown in the Kooros Collection almost exactly. Similar vertical wings are also found on a Liao dynasty gilt-bronze 'phoenix' crown of this type, but with the domed central cap designed in repoussé rather than openwork, now in the collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio (acc. no. 2021.1.1). The three 'flaming pearl' appliques on one side of the Kooros crown appear to have come from a contemporaneous Liao dynasty gilt-bronze crown or ornament, and applied to the area formerly occupied by the second vertical wing after excavation.
Related crowns designed with 'phoenix' motifs and belonging to Wang's Type B(a) classification include a gilt-silver openwork crown unearthed in 1986 from the tomb of Princess of Chen (dated to the seventh year of Kaitai, corresponding to 1018) at Naiman Banner, Inner Mongolia, and now in the collection of the Archaeological Research Institute of Inner Mongolia, illustrated in the catalog of the special exhibition organized by the Shanghai Museum, Treasures on Grassland: Archaeological Finds from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Shanghai, 2000, pp. 202-203. The Princess of Chen crown was illustrated again by Hsueh-man Shen (ed.) in the catalog of special exhibition organized by Asia Society, Gilded Splendor: Treasures of China's Liao Empire (907-1125), New York, 2006, pp. 102-103, with a close-up detail of the wing showing a rising phoenix on the cover; and by Wang, op. cit., p. 88, fig. 2-42-1. Other 'phoenix' crowns of this type include one excavated from a Liao tomb in Jarud Banner, Inner Mongolia, and a gilt-silver model belonging to a Liao imperial concubine and excavated in 2015 in Doulun county, Inner Mongolia (ibid., figs. 2-42-2 and 2-42-3).