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1. Rao, Zhizao Jishu: Zhuzao, Chengxing he Hanjie, 55.

2. This may have been inspired by the phenomenon in which smelting copper, if accidently splashed on a paved floor during the transfer, cooled and hardened into the shape of the stone. See Knauth, The Metalsmiths, 44.

3. Knauth, The Metalsmiths, 44.

4. Ibid.

5. For a comparable description, see Bagley, “Shang Ritual Bronzes,” 13.

6. Robert Bagley, personal communication, August 2014. For detailed discussion, see Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 15–30.

7. The gate system usually comprises a funnel (or sprue) to introduce the liquid metal, runners to permit its flow inside the mold, gates to regulate the flow, and vents to allow the escape of gasses. See Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 17; Rao, Zhizao Jishu: Zhuzao, Chengxing he Hanji, 117; Meyers, “Casting Technology in Cambodia and Related Southeast Asian Civilizations,” 33.

8. The innermost layer of the investment had to be the finest in consistency to guarantee that all the surface details of the wax were completely enveloped; the external layers were made coarser and harder with sandy and organic inclusions, for the purpose of keeping the clay from cracking and minimizing its shrinkage during baking. See Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 17; Mattusch, Classical Bronzes, 15.

9. See Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 31; Mattusch, Enduring Bronze, 55. Hemingway terms this method “solid lost-wax casting,” but the term “solid casting” could be applied to both the direct and indirect lost-wax processes (“Bronze Sculpture,” 39). The method illustrated here, to use the most accurate, specific terminology, is “solid casting by the direct lost-wax process.”

10. Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 16, 25; Mattusch, Classical Bronzes, 15.

11. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 64, note 248.

12. Ibid., 44; So and Bunker, Traders and Raiders on China's Northern Frontier, 59–60.

13. Sandars, Prehistoric Art in Europe, 160.

14. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 44.