Page 55 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

pressed into service as flower vases. The inscriptions suggest that this jue,
like many Western Zhou bronzes and like the virtually identical jue in the
Victoria and Albert Museum (see previous paragraph), might have been cast
as a commemorative vessel, in this case, to record and commemorate the
appointment of Chen Xin as tutor to Zhang Su. By the late Ming and Qing
periods, however, kilns at Dehua in central Fujian province were producing
porcelain versions (so-called blanc-de-Chine ware) of the jue that were
probably used as secular cups for drinking wine and tea and, on occasion, as
water-pouring vessels for the scholar's desk. 12
Thanks to one of its inscriptions, this jue can be dated to a specific
year (1464), a rare circumstance among later Chinese bronzes. The legs and
posts were cast separately and added to the vessel, but the decoration and
the three inscriptions were integrally cast with the vessel itself, the standard
convention followed in creating vessels in the Song, Yuan, and early Ming
periods. In typical fifteenth-century fashion, the majority of the vessel
surface is unornamented, the decoration restricted to a single band about
the waist [compare 7]. Also in early Ming fashion, the decorative scheme
is bilaterally symmetrical, as is the positioning of the inscriptions; even the
vessel has been interpreted in as symmetrical a manner as the limits of
the shape allow.

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 5 1