Page 195 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

HIS UNUSUAL DOUBLE VASE is made up of two small pear-shaped
vases, a larger one and a smaller one joined at midsection. Each
T ovoid vase has a lightly swollen body and a constricted neck. A band
of low-relief cicada-shaped lappets encircles the shoulder of each vase;
set within the cicada panel on the front and back of each vase is a small,
animal-mask escutcheon from which descends a fixed ring decorated with
bosses. Dominating these symmetrically placed and regularly occurring ele-
ments is an overlay of archaistic, strapwork dragons arranged asymmetrically.
Splashes of gilding contrast with brown-coated areas, the applied coating
betrayed by tiny brushstrokes. The vessel, its bases, and decoration appear
to have been integrally cast, though various ornamental details were imparted
through cold working.
Reading Qiarilorignian zhi, the four-character mark indicates that this
double vase was made during the Qianlong reign. Lacking the finesse of cast
and carved marks [contrast 38 and 39], this incised mark appears clumsily
written on first inspection, but it corresponds to ones incised on works of
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cloisonne enamel and Peking glass from the Qianlong era.
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From one of the Qing palaces, this vase probably served an ornamen-
tal rather than practical function, though it might have held water for use
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at a desk. It reflects the Qianlong taste for paired objects, for archaistic
designs, and for ever more unusual styles. The newly invented vase shape
was most likely inspired by small (but longer necked) vases of so-called
'hanging gall' (damping) form that were made in guan ware during the
Southern Song and Yuan periods and that were treasured during the Qing,
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as indicated by examples in the imperial collection. The archaistic, disem-
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bodied dragons, however, derive ultimately from the dragon interlaces that
frequently appear on bronze vessels of the Eastern Zhou period. 7 Strapwork
dragons had been used as borders on white jade plaques of the Kangxi
period 8 and, set against a leiwen ground, as the principal decorative motif
on Yongzheng bronzes [37]; new here is the arrangement in an asymmetrical
design that breaks with the traditional Chinese preference for symmetry.
The double vase's insistent asymmetry suggests a date of manufac-
ture late in the Qianlong era, when artists dared experiment with mannered
forms in creating works for the palace. Two similar double vases in enamel
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bear inscribed dates of 1786, supporting the dating proposed here. A double
vase almost identical to the Clague vessel was formerly in the collection of
W. W. Winkworth, London. 10

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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