Page 75 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries, with examples known from
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20
the Xuande, 18 Chenghua, Jiajing, Wanli, 21 and Tianqi 22 reigns. Such vessels
from the Wanli period usually present the feiyu as the principal decorative
motif, surrounded by a variety of other sea creatures, all set against a
ground of roiling waves. The decorative scheme on the Clague censer is
especially close in both style and content to porcelain vessels from the
Wanli period with feiyu decoration.
The exact meaning of the feiyu is unclear, except that it is an auspi-
cious beast whose appearance heralds the arrival of good fortune. Although
James Watt has suggested that the feiyu represents the transformation of
the carp into a dragon as it leaps the falls at Longmen 23 [compare 57], wings
are not traditionally mentioned as attributes of the carp-dragon in that
story, however helpful they might be in assisting the carp to ascend the falls.
Without commenting on the meaning of the motif, Schuyler Cammann points
out that according to the Ming shi (Official History of the Ming Dynasty)
robes with feiyu patterns were worn by palace attendants beginning in the
Yongle reign, and that according to later references, they were also bestowed
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on ministers of state and worthy courtiers. Given its auspiciousness and its
at least quasi-association with officialdom, the feiyu must have held strong
appeal for scholars, especially ones aspiring to enter official ranks, and for
families with sons preparing for the civil service examinations.
Like the principal band of decoration, the floral scroll encircling the
censer's foot seems to have been borrowed from contemporaneous ceram-
ics, perhaps from the border of a blue-and-white vessel. The decoration in
the uppermost register, however, derives from antiquity and features two
pairs of highly schematized confronting birds with long, scrolling tails. The
birds, often called dragons but identified as birds by tails, beaks, and crests,
evolved from related creatures that often appear in a subsidiary band
immediately above the principal band of decoration in bronzes of the early
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Western Zhou period. The butterfly designs that separate the birds on
the Clague vessel represent a reduction and transformation of the relief
heads that typically separate birds, and sometimes dragons, in those same
subsidiary bands on early Western Zhou vessels. Hu Wenming and his son
frequently incorporated such butterfly-like motifs into their bronzes, often
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as legs on cylindrical incense burners; such whimsical transformations of
antique designs held a special appeal during the late Ming. The formal-
ized pattern of waves was appropriated from contemporaneous lacquer,
while the ring-punched grounds of the top and bottom registers of the
handles were drawn from Tang silver.

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