Mold fragment

By the time of the Zhou dynasty, bronze casters had developed a manufacturing process which used both outer and inner molds of clay to shape and decorate a bronze vessel in a single procedure. Pieces of outer molds, like this fragment, allowed the molten bronze to come into direct contact with the mold's carved interior surface to create decorative patterns on the vessel after the bronze solidified and the clay mold was broken away. The decorative motif seen here consists of a cloud pattern alternating with four zoomorphic patterns on the top, a bulging eye and a cloud pattern in the middle, and a cloud below, a design pattern which appears frequently on early Zhou bronzes, as attested to by several examples from Shaanxi (Shaanxi Inst. Arch. 1980 vol. III: figs. 30, 31, 45, 46, 63; vol. IV: figs. 9, 19, 35, 112, 145, 167).