Page 42 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

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Called a xiangtong (literally, 'incense cylinder ), this implement would
have been used with a censer, to hold a supply of incense sticks. For their
studios and poetic gatherings, the literati favored rare fragrances that
were often imported from tropical lands and that were usually prepared,
depending on the material, in the form of powder, pellets, or splinters (as
in a splinter of sandalwood); for daily use in scenting the home or in offer-
ing homage to household deities, however, incense sticks - often termed
joss sticks - were traditionally used. Rarely, images appear in woodblock-
printed books that include an incense stick holder vaguely of the type
featured here, such as the illustration in the second juan of a 1608 edition
of the secular drama Jinjian ji (The Brocaded Stationery) in the Beijing
Library, that depicts a woman lighting a stick of incense before a seated
image of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, a cylindrical incense-stick holder standing
nearby on the altar, the ends of the incense sticks clearly projecting above
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its top. The collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, includes
at least two bronze incense-stick holders with reticulated designs 2 that
relate to the openwork elements in the lower portion of the Clague piece.
The attribution of this incense stick holder to the Yuan is fully justified
by the similarity of its style to that of the previous hexagonal vase [4],
whose late Song to Yuan date is confirmed by a wealth of archaeological
data. The vessels share a taste not only for faceted bodies with accented
corners but for bodies divided into horizontal registers ornamented with
complex diaper patterns, some of which repeat from register to register,
and some of which are asymmetrically disposed. Both vessels have thin
walls, making them relatively light in weight for their size, and both have
the dark brown patina associated with this group. Although both were
cast in parts, later joined together, both claim integrally cast decoration
that shows minimal cold working. Additionally both show the bits of bronze
residue that slightly blur the decoration that are such telling features of late
Song and Yuan bronzes. In addition, the diaper patterns in the top and
middle registers of this incense stick holder are extremely close to those
on a small, hexagonal bronze vase in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, that has been dated to the Yuan dynasty on the basis of its simi-
larity to a bronze vase excavated from a Yuan site in Inner Mongolia. 3 The
diaper pattern in the top register is like the architectural ornament depicted
in the Han Palace, a Yuan dynasty hanging scroll by Li Rongjin (active, first
half fourteenth century) now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. 4 The

42 C H I N A ' S R E N A I S S A N C E IN B R O N Z E