Page 103 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

T A N D I N G ON A SMALL CIRCULAR FOOT, this diminutive vase has
a cylindrical body whose walls expand ever so gently at its top to
S receive the angled shoulder; a tall, subtly flaring neck rises from the
shoulder's crown, a relief rib clearly segregating neck from shoulder. Three
raised ribs encircle the neck a third of the way up from its base. The body of
the vessel features a scene of bamboo growing beside a rock, the simplified
design inlaid in silver wire against an unembellished ground; the shoulder
features four bats in flight, their wings spread, their heads pointing upward.
Its silver inlay now partly missing, a single bowstring line borders the lower
edge of the cylindrical body, while another highlights the central rib on the
neck. The flat, shallow base has at its center a mark reading Shisou in two
lishu (clerical-script) characters; inlaid in silver wire, the mark is large in
proportion to the base. The surface color is that of aged but untreated
bronze, though the possibility of enhancement after casting is not ruled
out. Although the artisan who made this bronze has exercised every effort
to convey the impression of integral casting, the rib at the top of the
shoulder no doubt conceals the join of a separately cast neck and body.
Like those on the two previous vessels [16,17], the mark on this vase
claims it to be the work of Shisou, the putative late Ming craftsman re-
nowned for bronzes elegantly inlaid with designs in silver wire. Although
the technique of this vase accords with conventional descriptions of Shisou's
work, the assertiveness of the rather large mark would seem at odds with
traditional descriptions of his signatures as refined and stately. In the Shisou
manner, this vase is no doubt later than the previous two pieces and per-
haps dates to the late eighteenth or nineteenth century.
The Chinese had produced small bottles and vases in a variety of
shapes since remote antiquity, but most such bottles of pre-Qing date
have round or pear-shaped bodies rather than cylindrical ones with angled
shoulders. 1 During the Song dynasty, the guan, Ru and Longquan kilns
introduced a family of larger ceramic bottles with long necks, straight
sides, and flat or angled shoulders 2 that might have served as the distant
model for this bronze; such Song-dynasty bottles lack the dramatic profile
of this vase with its long, ribbed neck, however, and they have flat or
gently inclined shoulders rather than the steeply pitched, bowed variety
seen here. In fact, it was only in the Qing that small bottles for the scholar's
table began to appear in quantity in both bronze and ceramic ware. In
that context, this bronze would find parallels, though not exact counter-
parts, among the small vases of the so-called 'eight objects for the writing

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T H E R O B E R T H. C L A G U E C O L L E C T I O N