Page 125 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

working, having been cast as rounded protuberances, or 'blanks/ ready
for the decorator's tools; variations in thickness and other irregularities
suggest that the fixed rings at the sides were cast as disks and then carved
into rings. The manes and facial details in the legs' lion-head mounts were
entirely cold worked.
A paucity of related material hampers precise dating of this censer.
It might be noted, however, that the strongly rectilinear form - with its
straight sides, angular corners, squared indentation, and short but emphatic
lip - finds some parallels in the tall, square-shouldered, porcelain vases
produced late in the Kangxi reign with decoration in underglaze cobalt
blue, overglaze polychrome enamels, 2 or overglaze gold against a 'powder-
blue' 3 or 'mirror-black' 4 ground. The indentation also recalls the squared
necks that sometimes occur on late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
5
porcelain censers from the Dehua kilns. The naturalism of the lion-head
leg mounts also points to an eighteenth-century date for this censer, as
does the extensive reliance on cold-working techniques for finishing the
piece (with even the handles and fixed rings carved after casting).
Tripod vessels rank among the oldest bronze shapes, with clear
antecedents in Neolithic pottery. Used mainly for boiling, simmering, and
stewing during the Shang and Western Zhou periods, 6 classical ding vessels
have a circular bowl with a round bottom set atop three legs, the circular
mouth usually with two loop handles. Tripod vessels were the most favored
7
of all Chinese bronzes, and they were widely imitated in Ming and Qing
decorative arts. Although the ancient bronze tripods were cooking vessels,
they were sometimes used as censers on special occasions in later times.
The early Ming antiquarian Cao Zhao (flourished 1387-99) had already men-
tioned in 1388 that archaic bronzes could be used as censers, noting that
'[in earliest times] there were no incense burners. ...Ancient vessels used
as incense burners today were sacrificial vessels and not [real] incense
burners.' 8 Later imitations, such as the present ding-shaped censer, were
made as substitutes for the ancient vessels which were considered too
precious to be used on a regular basis.

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T I I E R O B E R T II. C L A G U E C O L L E C T I O N 125