This pottery gui (vessel) is incanous with a funnel-like stubby neck and an oblique spout at its top toward the front of the body. The annular handle connects the upper neck and the lower body, with its surface pressed into a noose shape. The belly of the gui is slightly spherical. There is a ring of horizontal bumped patterns at its waist with a lace-like decoration embossed on the surface. Three feet in the shape of large empty pockets are evenly distributed beneath the belly in an upright posture.
Pottery gui are containers that people used to heat water or wine in ancient times, with white pottery gui being an extremely rare variety. They are made of kaolin clay and fired in a kiln at around 1,200℃. The sidewalls are light and thin and the texture is hard. White pottery gui were not practical objects used in daily life. Instead, they were likely reserved for more important occasions, serving as ritual vessels.
The tribes located in the east of the Central Plains were collectively referred to as Dongyi in ancient China, and they were largely active around today’s Shandong and Jiangsu provinces. Starting from the Dawenkou culture in the Neolithic period, the regional culture of this area has achieved unprecedented development. The Dongyi people used birds as their totems, thus there are many bird images in their culture. Pottery gui are generally recognized as the evolution of a variety of bird images, completely imitating the shape and spirit of a bird’s head, especially the neck and mouth. In the shape of a bird stretching flexibly and raising its head up, combining both realism and abstraction, it artistically displays the ideal image of a totem, and thus vividly manifests the worship of birds.