Metalworking in Bronze Age China: The Lost-Wax Process By Peng Pe ...

Collins apparently considered the wax models to have been directly and individually shaped, and “in consequence no two could be exactly similar.”²⁵ Bruce Simpson, in a book first published in 1948, still took the delicate decoration on a “Shang” bronze artifact to be the “filigree” cast by the lost-wax process.²⁶

W. Perceval Yetts certainly noticed the section-mold cast marks on early Chinese bronzes, but he still staunchly believed in the lost-wax theory. In a catalogue published in 1929, he argued that the fitting of mold sections used in the previously mentioned indirect lost-wax process caused such mold marks, which he problematically called “seams.”²⁷ In 1935, Yetts reiterated his point by criticizing the section-mold theory. Yetts held the opinion that section molds from Anyang were used to shape wax models, and those with scorch marks were fragments of the investment molds.²⁸ Herrlee Creel also agreed with this notion in 1935,²⁹ despite having seen the section-mold fragments from Anyang himself.³⁰ As Creel explained of the mold sections (probably for bronze jue goblet),³¹

Note the smooth edges of the molds and the lugs and notches designed to cause them to fit together properly. The way in which such molds were used is not yet fully clear; it seems plausible that they were used to cast wax models, to be reworked and used for cire perdue casting later, rather than for casting the bronze itself.³²

In the following two decades, most Western students of early Chinese bronzes were still convinced by the lost-wax theory. For instance, in 1954, Herbert Maryon and Harold Plenderleith, knowing of the discovery of section molds from Anyang, still conceived of an unreasonably convoluted and jumbled means of reconstructing what they considered to be a largely lost-wax process (for illustration, see fig. 5).³³

Mold fragments unearthed from Anyang greatly facilitated the study of the Chinese bronze casting process. In a research paper published in 1931, Li Ji, the director of the Anyang excavations, suspected that the flanges of Chinese bronzes might have originated from the fitting of mold sections.³⁴ This argument, though not completely appropriate,³⁵