Zun 尊 - a multi shaped wine vessel with wide opening and flat bottom. After coming up in early Shang times this vessel developed forms with a wide belly. The zun was a standard type vessel and was copied until Qing times. The character is a picture of the vessel and is taken in verbal sense with the meaning of "to rever, to venerate, to honor".

Zun - this type of zun from early Shang (30 cm tall) has much room for ornaments with its wide corpus. Sometimes there are even quadrangular pieces.

Zun - in late Shang times, the zun became a popular test object for bronze casters and artists. This piece with two sheep-shaped heads has still the large surface of the old types, but the legs are something new. Attention was drawn away from the ornaments to the whole shape of the vessel. The typical shapes of animals are elephants, rhinos, oxen, sheep, tigers, qilin unicorns, pigs, horses, and birds (especially owls).

Zun - the nameless casters of Zhou times made much experiments with old vessel types. From now on, the zun had a typically small opening with a cover. This artful elephant is still decorated with the old taotie 饕餮 pattern.

Zun - a vessel with the shape of a sacrificial animal. Seeing this wonderful ox from the Spring and Autumn period, one thinks of the victim ox that King Hui of Liang felt sorry for in the book of Mengzi.

Zun - with simple beauty and lifelike, this rhinoceros from the Warring States period must have been in original in front of the artists. The climate 2500 years ago was much warmer than today, so that elephants and rhinos could make life at least south of the Yangtse.

Zun - a perfection of Chinese bronze casting is this very richly ornamented zun, standing upon a dish. The dish was filled with hot water to heat the wine in the jar. This precious piece was a tomb offering of tomb B of Marquis Zeng 曾侯乙墓 in Suixian/Hubei (early Warring States). The filigree ornaments in dragon shape (panchi 蟠螭) was first shaped with wax, then coated with soft clay. Heating it, the melting wax came out, and the bronze could be casted in the hollow ductus. This so-called lost wax technic was also used in the Western part of the Eurasian continent, but to cast such filigee shapes can not be copied today.