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Wondering if anyone can tell me what these are, or what they were used for. Curious about the value as well. They are rusted with no visible inscription.

These are bronze "fang-hu" which is a type of ritual object dating to the archaic past. The hu vase is a very common shape in Chinese art and the "fang" in front indicates its flat angular form... Now to your fang-hu. It has certain things that look to have good age and other things that make me wary... The tigers up the sides look zhou dynasty but the size of the decorative flanges (ridges) that cover the casting process look too large to be zhou and look more Shang in date... Also I have never seen handles like that on a hu, only on some GUI... But the corrosion looks good and there are more types/forms of these ritual bronze items than people realise... that decorative piercing in the metal was certainly used by the zhou/Chou.... The corrosion looks right for the age too.... I think you may have something good here and that it is definitely worth more investigation.... Email me more images and I will put you in touch with a French (don't worry,he speaks English) museum curator, who specialises in archaic bronzes... You can go from there..... GOOD LUCK

Hello,

As mentioned by Adam, these recipients are supposed to be from the BC period.
Problems are:
1- a bit of Zhou style + a bit of Shang style = fake. It's either one or the other, but not both.
2- Handles on first Gui is not at all corroded the right way and look very new to me.
3- You mentioned "rusted", there should not be any rust on bronze.
4- As on most of the fake,I don't see the very first form of natural corrosion on bronze:cuprite.

Sorry to say but I'm quite convince these 2 objects are not old.

Cheers,
Pierre.

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