Page 63 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

such Confucian themes as wise rulers, loyal subjects, and virtuous sages.
In fact, due to the policies of the Tokugawa shogunate, such stories were
more frequently depicted in Japanese art of the period than in Chinese art.
The attribution of the vase to seventeenth-century Japan rests on
its similarity in shape and style of decoration to vessels produced in Japan
early in the Edo period (1603-1868). Chinese vessels with long necks and
flaring mouths typically have the body positioned at the midpoint of the
vessel and set atop a tall base; in such pieces - whether bronze [compare
8
30, 32], jade, 7 or ceramic ware - the neck and mouth may account for fully
half the total height of the vessel, but seldom, if ever, do they claim as
much as two-thirds of the total height, as they do here. Chinese vessels
also tend to underscore the separation of neck from shoulder through an
angular change in the profile, sometimes augmented by a relief band at
the base of the neck; in this vase, the sweeping organic line that defines
the neck springs from the vessel's angular shoulder, so that the raised
band around the lower portion of the neck does not relate to any change
in vessel profile. In addition, Ming and Qing interpretations of the zun
vessel virtually always give it a rounded body, rather than a bowl-like body
with an angular shoulder. The emphatic lip of this vessel is also unusual in
the Chinese context, a thickened edge being more typical.
Anomalous in the Chinese tradition, all of the elements enumerated
above are characteristic of Japanese bronzes of the Edo period. Japanese
zun-shaped flower vases typically have a low-set, bowl-shaped body with
an angular shoulder at the midpoint; springing from the angular shoulder,
the soaring neck and trumpet mouth often account for more than two-
thirds of the total vessel height. Edo-period vessels also frequently have a
narrow raised band that encircles the lower portion of the neck which does
not relate to any change in profile; they also often have emphatic rims. 9
The most striking aspect of the decoration on the Clague vessel is
its insistent frontal orientation. Although Chinese bronzes, jades, and
ceramics of the Ming and Qing dynasties typically have decorative schemes
that encircle the vessel, each vantage point usually affords an interesting
and comprehensible view of the subject matter [compare 9]; seldom are
Chinese pieces organized with such clear front/back orientation that the
subject matter is recognizable from only one vantage point. Also most
unusual from a Chinese point of view is the depiction of a waterfall without
a source; in this case, the waterfall appears, deus ex machina, because the
story requires it, even though there is no precipice, let alone a mountain,
down which it can cascade. The circular motifs, apparently whirlpools, in

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