Po Ting He

The same inscription here appears on both the vessel and its cover, but their style of writing is different. One follows the simple strength of the early Western Zhou period, while the other forges a new path towards elegance in the mid Western Zhou. This transitory combination of tradition and innovation just so happens to appear in the same vessel, indicating that the inscriptions on the mold were probably originally done by two different people and representing a time when the new was beginning to supercede the old.