Page 41 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

HIS UNUSUAL OBJECT COMBINES a four-legged hexagonal reser-
voir with a six-legged table-like stand to fashion a holder for a
T supply of incense sticks. Rounded ridges accentuate the corners of
the faceted body, rising from the lower border of the reservoir to the top of
the uppermost decorative register but not intruding into the unornament-
ed band below the everted plain lip. Narrow but deeply cast indentations
in the ridges generally correspond in placement to the encircling thread-
relief lines that divide the body into three horizontal registers. An extra
set of indentations appears on the vertical ridges at the midpoint of the
top register of decoration, suggesting the appearance of bamboo stalks.
At each side, right and left, on the uppermost decorated register, a low-
relief stylized blossom overlaps the vertical ridge, serving as the visual
support for a small loop from which hangs a moveable ring - the ring not
cast but bent from a short section of bronze. Four curvilinear legs issue
from the mouths of single-horned animal heads to elevate the open-
bottomed hexagonal reservoir above its table-like stand. The legs at right
and left are affixed to the reservoir's vertical ridges and appear directly
below the ring handles; the other two legs are joined, front and back, at
the center of the lowest decorated register. Intended to serve as the
support for the incense sticks, the unembellished flat top of the hexag-
onal stand rests on eight small spacers that raise it above the stand's
ornamental apron whose lower edge is bracketed; from the corners of the
apron descend the six tapering, medially crested, S-curved legs that rest
on the top edge of the continuous floor stretcher. The stand and the
uppermost band of the reservoir are undecorated; the stand's stretcher
and the reservoir's three main horizontal registers, however, are enlivened
with complex diapering. The reservoir's uppermost decorated register ex-
hibits an intricate pattern of diamond-shaped lozenges, each bordered by
double bowstring lines and each displaying an abstract eight-petaled
blossom at its center; the middle register includes a compressed pattern of
tiny round and elliptical bosses that more or less line up in vertical columns
(but not in horizontal rows) and that are interconnected by an elaborate
network of fine thread-relief lines; the lowest register features a balanced
but asymmetrical thread-relief scroll - presumably vegetal but perhaps in-
spired by the 'dissolved' animal interlaces on Eastern Zhou bronzes - that
imparts a decided sense of movement. The continuous floor stretcher repeats
the flower-in-the-square tile pattern of the topmost register. The interior
of the reservoir and the underside of the stand are plain.

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 3 7