Page 112 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

cabriole legs, fangding of the period stand on columnar legs whose height
typically approximates that of the vessel's body. Though this censer descends
from classical models, its squat proportions, cabriole legs, and decorative
scheme distinguish it as a work of the Ming dynasty.
The 1526 Xuande yiqi tupu depicts three rectangular censers with
angular corners and one covered fangding with rounded corners and cabriole
3
legs. Although it might descend from the covered fangding with rounded
corners or from a type not illustrated - since Xuande yiqi tupu illustrates only
a selection of all the different Xuande shapes - the Clague censer, with its
short legs, bulging sides, and squat proportions, reflects a late Ming inter-
pretation of the shape. The bosses and handles definitely derive from Xuande
bronzes, however, as evinced by depictions in Xuande yiqi tupu that show li
4
tripod censers with rope-like handles and low, circular censers with convex
sides bordered top and bottom by a band of bosses. 5
Though used only infrequently in antiquity, rope-like handles have an
ancient lineage in China, stretching back to the Neolithic era as attested by
the white earthenware ewers of vaguely zoomorphic form produced on the
Shandong peninsula between 2400 and 2000 BC by potters of the Longshan
Culture. 6 Bail handles imitating twisted rope sometimes appear on Shang-
dynasty wine vessels, 7 and loop handles resembling twisted rope occa-
8
sionally grace Zhou-dynasty ding and //tripod food vessels, the certain, if
distantly removed, locus classicus for the handles on this censer. Although
only a few Song and Yuan ceramics 9 have rope-like handles, they are stan-
dard fare on Yuan bronzes, 10 as witnessed by those recovered from the
Chinese merchant ship that sank off the coast of Sinan, Republic of Korea,
in 1323. As noted above, Xuande yiqi tupu reveals that twisted-rope handles
were used during the Xuande period, though it does not establish whether
they were inherited from Yuan bronzes or adopted from ancient vessels
(perhaps via depictions in Song catalogs). Reflecting the far-reaching influ-
ence of Xuande bronzes, Ming and Qing censers in cloisonne enamel 11 and
Dehua porcelain 12 (so-called blanc-de-Chine ware) sometimes have rope-
like handles, paired, in most cases, with the elegantly streamlined body
types associated with Xuande censers.
Although they sometimes appear as the principal decoration on Bronze
Age vessels, 13 bosses first found popularity as border decoration in the
narcissus-bulb bowls and flowerpot basins produced by the Jun 14 and
Longquan 15 kilns in the Song, Yuan, and early Ming periods. Jun ware basins
typically have their bosses set in a band, suggesting that they are the likely
source for the bosses on Xuande censers and, thus, for those on the Clague

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