Page 117 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

openwork pattern of the scrolling clouds; one phoenix (male) with elab-
orate tail, heavily feathered neck, and extended claws, the other (female)
with bipartite tail, ornamented neck, and retracted claws; and one phoenix
shown from above (the male) and the other from below (the female). The
coiled closed-mouthed dragon that forms the knob extends one four-clawed
foot but conceals the other. A mark with six, thread-relief, kaishu (standard-
script) characters arranged in three columns appears in a sunken rectangular
cartouche in the center of the flat base; the base and interior of the foot-
ring are otherwise plain. The darkened interior of the censer is undecorated,
though each long side reveals one protuberance corresponding to the whirl-
pool on the exterior, the result of indenting the whirlpool by force after
casting. The interior of the cover is plain, the interior of the knob visible
through the circular opening at its base; a short vertical flange for securing
the cover on the bowl encircles the inner edge of the cover's wide flat rim.
Traces of rust-brown material on the handles and in the hollows and recesses
of the design suggest that the censer and its cover may have been coated
at some point to make its brassy surfaces resemble aged bronze.
This censer owes little, if anything, to the Xuande tradition other than
its six character mark. Although it pictures several covered vessels 1 and
2
several rectangular ones, Xuande yiqi tupu illustrates no rectangular censers
with rounded corners resting on a continuous ring foot. The closest parallels
to the Clague censer among archaic bronzes are covered, rectangular xu
vessels, which during the late Western Zhou period served as ritual food
containers. 3 Most xu vessels have four, short, band-like legs that follow the
corners' curvature, but a few boast a short, continuous ring foot of a type
4
that might have inspired the one on this piece. Although xu vessels were
occasionally imitated in cloisonne enamel during the Qing dynasty, 5 sug-
gesting that the vessel type was known, a relationship between such ancient
bronzes and censers of this type remains to be proven. Many Ming-dynasty
censers had covers, more than surviving numbers might indicate since many
have been lost, but the use of covers increased dramatically during the
Qing; openwork covers not only created interesting patterns in the rising
smoke but afforded a measure of protection from fire by preventing burning
embers from popping out of the censer.
The decorative scheme on this censer evolved from the depictions
of dragons and sea creatures (haishou) frolicking amidst waves that enliven
Ming ceramics and bronzes [12]. In Ming examples, the dragon, whether
feiyu fish-dragon or standard long, is typically set against an undulating sea

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 1 1 1