An Ancient Chinese Wu-Zhu Mould for your viewing pleasure

I bought this several years ago from a Chinese dealer whom I trust. There were two pieces of the mould in the lot, and this was the better of the two. I sold the worse one for double what I paid for the pair.

This mould is one of the earlier ones from the Western Han dynasty, based on the shape of the characters. The coins produced from this mould would be attributed as H-8.9, which date to ca 90 BC.

You can see the main channel where the bronze would flow and how it would branch out into the spaces occupied by the impressions of the coins. When the bronze cooled, the two mould halves would be removed to reveal a wu zhu coin tree.

If I had the entire mould, there would be an inscription that would give the current ruler and the year of his reign, effectively giving a specific date to the mould. Unfortunately, that is not the case here, so Hartill's estimate is as good as mine.

 

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SLICK! I was looking at Ancient Chinese Casting molds just yesterday! Perhaps, one of the ones I was seriously looking at was your CAST-OFF! Hmmmm... maybe there is some wiggle room for further discussions...

 

The one I sold went to Bob Reis. I don't know if he still has it.

 

I haven't seen one before. Very interesting! Thank you for sharing and congratulations on an excellent piece of minting history.

 

YUP!

 

@Alegandron Like this one?

 

It may be... I just went back to Bob and Scott's sites, and cannot find it quickly. Yesterday, I was in a research "search-and-destroy" mode all day that I cannot recall exactly where I saw it. I was VERY intrigued, then bought something else! I thought I would come back to it at a different day. But the one you show above looks familiar!

I have been involved in Sand-Casting for consumer products off-and-on for the last 35 years. Manufacturing in the US, various European sites, and several in China. I just thought it was a cool piece as the technology and process is similar spanning over, what?, 5,000 years???

 

I sold this Wang Mang mould of Da Quan Wu Shih about a year and a half ago at auction. It did have control marks visible in the top channel. Sadly, there was no interest and it went for just $150.