Page 111 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

F RECTANGULAR FORM with rounded corners and convex sides,
this small censer stands on four cabriole legs. A loop handle in the
O form of three intertwined filaments resembling twisted rope rises
from the flattened lip of each short side. A narrow raised band with ten
hemispherical bosses borders the top of the censer; an identical one sur-
rounds the base. The censer's bulging sides sport the 'Eight Auspicious
Emblems,' or bajixiang - wheel, conch shell, canopy, umbrella, flower,
covered jar, double fish, and endless knot - arranged with one emblem in
the center of each side and one on each rounded corner. At the center of
the otherwise plain, flat base is a cast mark in six thread-relief kaishu
(standard-script) characters arranged in three columns in a recessed rect-
angular cartouche, the ground of which has been darkened to enhance
legibility. All elements of the censer were integrally cast, with only minimal
cold working after casting.
Like two censers previously discussed [15, 16], this censer and the
five following ones [21-25] bear marks claiming they were made during the
Xuande reign of the Ming dynasty. All six censers in this group have the
standard Xuande mark reading Da Ming Xuandenian zhi - except number 25,
whose mark reads Da Ming Xuandenian zao - arranged in three columns
of two characters each. Although each mark incorporates the basic Xuande
conventions discussed in entry fifteen, each includes elements that betray
its later origin. The two censers previously discussed were very likely inspired
by Xuande censers or copies of them; the present examples, by contrast,
are far enough removed in style from Xuande bronzes that they must be
regarded as fanciful interpretations: some doubtless descend from the
Xuande tradition through a series of intermediate copies or through wood-
block-printed illustrations in such catalogs as Xuande yiqi tupw, others are
hybrids, combining elements from Xuande bronzes with elements from
other traditions; yet others are simply fabrications with little, if any, con-
nection to the Xuande tradition, except the mark. A late sixteenth or early
seventeenth-century work, the present censer falls into the category of
hybrids, drawing its bosses and twisted-rope handles from Xuande bronzes
but its shape and decorative scheme from other sources.
The shape of this censer derives ultimately from a square ding, or
fangding, a rectangular cauldron which, during the Bronze Age, was used for
boiling grain. 1 Fangding from the Shang dynasty virtually always have angu-
lar corners, but ones from the Western Zhou sometimes employ rounded
2
corners. Although circular ding of Western Zhou date occasionally rest on

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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