Page 144 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

corresponds to late March and much of April in the Western calendar.
Because of its abundant petals, the tree peony is viewed as a symbol of
wealth and honor, often called fugui hua (literally, honor [and] wealth
flower). In fact, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, white-
jade amulets were sometimes embellished with a peony blossom on one
side and characters reading yutang fugui (May you enjoy wealth and
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honor) on the other. 13
Although it occasionally appears in the arts of the Ming dynasty,
the peach, like the bat [see 19], did not come into its own as a motif in the
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decorative arts until the Qing. A symbol of longevity, the peach began to
serve as a principal decorative motif on porcelains during the Kangxi era,
gained prominence during theYongzheng era, and then soared to popu-
larity during the succeeding Qianlong era. 15 Its appearance here indicates
that this small covered box can date no earlier than the eighteenth century.
Craftsmen began to employ chemical and thermal treatments at
least as early as the Xuande reign to induce varied surface colors on their
bronzes, especially on the so-called Xuande censers [see 15 and 16]. Although
descriptions in early catalogs assign them specific names, the surface
colors of early Ming bronzes generally fall into the red, orange, yellow, and
brown range; the gunmetal gray of this box, by contrast, did not appear
until the Qing dynasty, and, even then, apparently not until the eighteenth
century. Representing both a different workshop and a different aesthetic,
this small box nevertheless finds parallels in its gunmetal gray surfaces in
those Shisou-tradition bronzes conventionally assigned to the eighteenth
century [compare 17].
The origin of the taste for dark-gray surfaces with gold decoration
remains unclear, though it may well lie in those porcelains with so-called
'mirror-black' glaze ornamented with overglaze gilding that enjoyed a note
of popularity in the eighteenth century. Applied against a red, green, or
white ground to create bold floral patterns during the mid- and late Ming
period, overglaze gilding was often used in association with iron-red 17 and
16
18
powder-blue grounds during the Kangxi era, but in a more painterly fashion.
Late in the Kangxi reign, such gilding was sometimes applied over a dense,
lustrous, black glaze of a type termed wujin (literally, black gold) in China 19
20
and mirror black in the West. Associated primarily with the Kangxi period,
black-glazed porcelains with decoration in overglaze gilding occasionally
appear among the wares of the Yongzheng 21 and Qianlong 22 eras, provid-
ing an eighteenth-century context for the Clague box.

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