Page 161 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

has bamboo-shaped rims and handles, but its low-relief decoration of bam-
boo and its dramatically attenuated form have earned it an attribution to the
Qianlong period. 4 Perhaps closest in style to the Clague vase is a covered
rectangular censer recently auctioned at Christies New York; attributed to
the 'seventeenth/eighteenth century' in the catalog, the bronze censer
has rims and handles in the shape of bamboo stalks and three legs in the
form of curved bamboo canes, just as on the Clague vase. 5
Although bamboo and wood had been used in China since remote
antiquity for functional articles as well as musical instruments, their appro-
priation as materials for the decorative arts came only in the Ming. 6 The
literati's attraction to bamboo as a material was no doubt sparked by their
interest in bamboo as a subject for painting and as a symbol of the Confucian
gentleman. With its Confucian overtones, its relationship to painting, and
its warm monochrome color, bamboo was a logical material for the host of
new scholars' accoutrements that appeared in the Ming, from brushpots to
wristrests and even to small sculptures. 7 Such infatuation with bamboo led
to its incorporation into the decorative arts as borders, handles, spouts [28],
and even as subject matter [14,18].
The well modeled lion-head handles on the shoulder resemble those
on the Clague collection's circular censer with decoration of eight auspicious
emblems [22]. Differing from the usually thin, plain, circular rings on Song,
Yuan, and Ming vessels, the somewhat thicker rings on Qing bronzes often
have their edges scalloped and their surfaces textured to make them resem-
ble coiled dragons, phoenixes, or clouds; the rings on the Clague vase, for
example, include stylized dragons from whose mouths issue cloud scrolls.
In addition, since they are anchored with pins, the rings on Qing vessels
are often able only to swing back and forth, rather than to rotate freely
like the fully moveable rings on earlier bronzes.
As indicated above, the similarity in shape to Kangxi-period porcelain
baluster vases establishes the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century
date of this vessel. The addition of legs to a vessel type that traditionally
stands on a circular foot reflects the early Qing penchant for experimen-
tation, as potters and metalsmiths competed to expand the range of vessel
shapes and decoration. In addition, the heads of the stylized dragons on the
rings suspended from the lion-head handles find parallels in the borders
of Kangxi-period jade plaques.
Although it claims this vase to have been made during the early Ming
reign of the Emperor Xuanzong, the six-character mark reading Da Ming
Xuandenian zhi on the base is spurious, as indicated by its weak calligraphic

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