Page 77 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

delight in visual puns and playful ambiguities, especially ones with classical
overtones, 31 so that the 'butterfly' in the top register can also be read as
the face of a bat, as the head of a lingzhi fungus, and, of course, as the
stylized head of a feline (from an archaic bronze).
The mark (with its late Ming seal-script characters) on the censer's
base identifies the artist as Hu Wenming, as do the use of an all-over
decorative scheme created solely through cold-working techniques and
the juxtaposition of raised motifs and textured ground. Especially typical
of Hu Wenming's style is the combination of antique elements - the gui
form, the handles, and the birds in the top register, for example - with
contemporaneous ones drawn from porcelain, jade, and lacquer, such as
the feiyu, sea creatures, and undulating waves in the principal register,
and the floral scroll in the lower one. Unusual in the hammered works of
other artists, the thick walls of this censer are a standard element of Hu
Wenming's raised copper vessels; they impart the substantial weight that
is such a consistent feature of his works [compare 11].

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