Page 74 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

have plain surfaces, while others include such non-representational dec-
orative schemes as lozenges, bosses, or vertical ribbing; none, however,
illustrates a scene of imaginary animals frolicking over waves. The origin of
the creatures pictured on the Clague vessel and its congeners 8 is uncertain,
though they may have been picked from an illustrated version of the Shanhai
jing (Classic of Mountains and Waterways), a late Zhou text on geography,
or, as Schuyler Cammann has suggested, from the Natural History section of
the Sancai tuhui (Illustrated Compendium of the Three Powers), a famous
encyclopedia. 9 Ferocious as they appear today, such beasts were no doubt
considered auspicious omens during the Ming dynasty.
Birds and other animals had been paired with rolling waves in the
decorative arts at least since Han times. A variety of 'sea animals' cavort
on the backs of Tang bronze mirrors, and dragons, fish, and ducks appear
against a chased design of stylized waves on the floor of a seventh- to early
eighth-century silver bowl 10 in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City, and dragons emerge from waves in two, tenth-century Yue ware
vessels in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - a ewer with alter-
11
nating parrot and dragon-and-wave roundels and a large bowl with three
12
dragons on its interior. A variety of birds and animals (including a monkey)
frolic amidst waves on a twelfth-century bronze jar 13 in the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London [compare 3], though the animals do not enjoy the
same assertive presentation as those on the Clague censer. As reflected by
the huge black-jade wine bowl of 1265 in the Round Fort, Beijing, the
repertoire of haishou, or sea animals, had expanded by the Yuan dynasty
to include dragons, horses, pigs, deer, rhinoceri, and conches, all set over
14
billowing waves. The bird-winged feiyu, or flying fish-dragon, had also
made its appearance by Yuan or early Ming times, as illustrated by a mag-
nificent openwork plaque in translucent white nephrite in the Seattle Art
15
Museum. James Watt notes that the Yuan dynasty witnessed the assimi-
lation of a number of Tibetan motifs into the repertoire of Chinese art and
also the modification under Tibetan influence of a number of traditional
Chinese motifs, with the result that many Chinese mythical animals, includ-
ing the feiyu, came to be depicted in Tibetan style with feathered wings. 16
During the early Ming period, the feiyu entered into the repertory
of imperial motifs, as shown by its double appearance (with small, bat
wings) on one of the carved stone panels 17 recovered from the site of the
banqueting hall of the imperial palace in Nanjing, built by the Hongwu
Emperor in the late fourteenth century. Though not common in the Ming,
the feiyu occurs from time to time on porcelains from the fifteenth,

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