Chinese Carved Wood & Brass Gong

Any age here or fairly recent?
Thanks

 

Hi,
Please quickly soak and wash the brass bell. Someone tried to polish it and left gunk in the recesses. Soak in hot soapy water for a hour and then brush it with a toothbrush. I used to see these in Chinatown NYC in the 70s. If it was old I would expect the carving to be finer.
greg

 

My guess would be first half of the 20th C.

 

I'm guessing 2nd half 20th C. Again for me, the market for this stuff just didn't really exist prior to WW2. The casting quality is poor indicating souvenir production.

 

Something about the bell form bothers me - I have only seen this type of thing with a "flat" round brass resonator. It looks like a replacement/marriage. And I have seen many of them - Dressing/Dinner gongs were pretty standard in most of the homes of my childhood.

 

You can tell quickly if the wood stand ever held a flat gong or not. Flat gongs have two points of suspension necessary to keep them from rotating out of line with the stand. If there aren't two wire or string mounting points visible in underside of the wood transom, a gong was not present.

Also, although separate hammer-type clappers like that shown are certainly more common to gong sets, the hammer is proper here because the bell was cast without the usual clapper-attachment part.

 

"Also, although separate hammer-type clappers like that shown are certainly more common to gong sets, the hammer is proper here because the bell was cast without the usual clapper-attachment part."

Ah - here we go with the eyesight issue again! I thought that I detected the remnants of a clapper attachment loop in the photo of the underside.................sorry!