Page 191 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

F FLATTENED HEMISPHERICAL FORM, this covered circular box
has a wide, bowl-shaped container resting on a broad, vertical
O footring; the tall cover has straight sides and a top that is nearly
flat, the top and sides joined by the rounded shoulders. Set against a
ground lightly textured to resemble woven fabric, a series of low-relief
dragon and phoenix motifs graces the box and its cover. Surrounded by
wispy clouds, a five-clawed, horned dragon and a phoenix with segmented
tail appear in the cover's central medallion. Occupying the lower half of
the composition, the S-curved dragon strides toward the viewer's right,
its legs extended and its head turned to face the flaming pearl set atop a
stylized lotus blossom at the center of the medallion. Its wings extended
in flight, its long tail fluttering behind, the phoenix occupies the upper half
of the composition; though it flies toward the viewer's left, the phoenix
turns its head to face the flaming pearl at the medallion's heart. A band of
simplified leiwen resembling interlocked T's borders the medallion. Three
confronting dragon and phoenix motifs embellish the cover's sides, while
another three enliven the walls of the bowl; a stylized peony blossom and
a stylized lotus with flaming pearl appear between the heads of each con-
fronting pair, while enveloping clouds set the celestial context. Identical
bands of interlocked-T leiwen encircle the lips of box and cover; a similar
but more emphatic leiwen band ornaments the footring. The interiors of
both box and cover are plain, though both are lined with pewter.
The four-character mark reading Qianlongnian zao on the base indi-
cates that this box was made during the Qianlong reign. The use of zao
(created) as the final character further indicates that the box was made
during the second half of the eighteenth century, a dating that agrees
with the bold calligraphic style of the mark [38]. Though they seldom merit
praise as fine calligraphy, the characters in marks of fully developed Qianlong
style are typically powerful, their power deriving not only from their rela-
tively large scale and their tendency to intrude into each other's space,
but from their thick yet modulated strokes, the vertical and diagonal ones
often with pointed ends, and their diagonally oriented horizontal strokes.
This circular covered box is an almost literal copy of a contempora-
neous box in carved red lacquer. 1 Lacking Bronze Age prototypes, such
boxes trace their ancestry to the smaller gold and silver boxes that were
popular in aristocratic circles during the Tang [see discussion, 12]. Imitated
in Ding porcelain and in a variety of celadon-glazed stonewares during
the Song, such small containers inspired larger boxes with domed covers
during the Yuan, both in qingbai porcelain 2 and in carved red and black

2 2 1
T H E R O B E R T II. C L A G U E C O L L E C T I O N