Page 121 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

T A N D I N G ON T H R E E C A B R I O L E L E G S , this circular, flat-bottomed
censer has a wide bowl with gracefully curved walls, its profile resem-
S bling a set of parentheses. Handles in the form of maned lion heads
appear at right and left, well positioned in relation to the legs. Set within
a narrow band, a beaded border encircles the base, while its mate enlivens
the subtly constricted neck. Around its exterior, the bowl sports decoration
of eight auspicious objects linked together by fluttering ribbons: a crackle-
glazed jar, a curtained and fringed umbrella with a jewel at its top, a tiered
and fringed canopy with a circular jewel at its crown, a peony blossom, a
pair of wheels, two fish, an endless knot, and a final object that resembles
a tiered canopy with a jewel at its tip but that is perhaps a conch shell. A
stylized cloud scroll ornaments the bulbous portion of each cabriole leg.
The broad, plain base has at its center a carved mark in six kaishu (stan-
dard-script) characters arranged in three columns within a recessed
rectangular cartouche. The interior of the censer is undecorated, as are
the backs and undersides of the legs. Resembling a patina, the warm rust-
brown color was likely induced through chemical treatment after casting.
This vessel derives from a Xuande bronze that Xuande yiqi tupu
terms a gudun lu (squat-drum-shaped censer) and pictures as a circular,
flat-bottomed container with short bulging walls, three cabriole legs, and
two lion-head handles. 1 Undecorated, the censer illustrated has around its
neck and base a border of small bosses centered in a narrow relief band
[compare 20] that might have inspired the beaded borders on the Clague
censer. Although it does not figure prominently among the border orna-
ments of Qing bronze vessels, beading typically appears at the tops and
bottoms of the lotus bases of eighteenth-century Sino-Tibetan bronze
sculptures of Buddhist deities, 2 which might have inspired the designer of
this bronze to transform the Xuande bosses into a row of continuous beading.
As previously noted, many Xuande censers were based on ceramic
forms created in the Song and Yuan dynasties. The ultimate source for
both this censer and its Xuande model is not an archaic bronze but a
narcissus-bulb bowl or flowerpot basin of the type produced at the Jun 3
and Longquan 4 kilns in the Song, Yuan, and early Ming periods. Although
they lack handles and stand on cloud-scroll feet rather than on cabriole
legs, such elegant accessories for growing plants typically have a low
circular body that rises from a flat bottom supported by three legs and
that often includes a band of bosses below the mouth.

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