Page 64 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

the register of waves about the foot are curious in a Chinese context, since
wave patterns on Chinese bronzes tend to feature either undulating waves
[see 7] or breaking waves with whitecaps [see 6]; the circular motifs on this
vase do, however, find kindred forms in the wave pattern on an eighteenth-
century Japanese bronze vase recently published by Michael Goedhuis. 10
Also very unusual from a Chinese point of view is the presentation of
several pictorial elements - the crane and pine trees, in particular - such that
they cross the borders formed by the thread-relief lines that descend from
the cusps at the lip, spreading across several of the petal-like segments.
Chinese artists tend to respect borders, establishing them to emphasize
the form of the vessel and to relate the decorative schemes they frame to
that form. When Chinese artists violate their carefully established borders,
as they occasionally do in the late Ming period, they do it in a playful but
self-conscious manner for calculated visual effect [see 9]; usually limited
to one discrete unit of the decoration, such breaking of form in the arts of
late Ming seldom involves the overall design scheme, as it does here. In
these characteristics, also, the Clague vase corresponds more to Japanese
art of the Edo period than to Chinese art of the late Ming and Qing periods.
Though most likely made in Japan, this vase was inspired by a Chinese
original, probably of late Ming date. The late Ming witnessed a vogue for
vessels with high-relief decoration, sometimes in combination with diaper
patterns [see 9]; carried to Japan, such vessels no doubt inspired the pre-
sent piece. The Japanese imported large quantities of both ceramics and
bronzes during the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods, prizing the bronzes as
vases and censers for use in the tea ceremony. 11 Included in the present
exhibition, this vase illustrates the close relationship between later Chinese
bronzes and at least one family of Edo-period Japanese bronzes.

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