Page 87 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

ISING FROM THE SMALL CIRCULAR FOOT, the thick walls of this
heavy but sleekly styled circular gu/-form censer expand rapidly to
R form the swollen body, constrict to shape the neck, and then flare
gently to define the mouth. In the form of stylized, scale-covered dragons
(or possibly fish) facing upward, the integrally cast handles divide the
censer into two halves. Four glowering taotie masks stare out from the
censer, one on each side and one centered under each handle. Long curvi-
linear lines inlaid in silver wire describe the basic features of the masks,
inlaid discs of sheet silver representing the irises and pupils of the eyes.
Undecorated areas act as unifying shields, pulling together the features of
the masks, while symmetrically placed leiwen elements suggest a back-
ground. Inlaid in silver wire, continuous leiwen meanders between bowstring
lines border the top and bottom of the censer, a plain band distinguishing
neck from body and another separating body from foot. The plain but deeply
sunken base has at its center a cast mark in six thread-relief kaishu (standard-
script) characters arranged in three columns within a recessed rectangular
cartouche. The interior of the censer is undecorated. Chemically treated after
casting to achieve its warm rust-brown surface, the brass-colored metal
shows on the underside of the footring and in areas of the lip where the
skin has worn thin.
Despite its six-character Xuande mark, this censer dates to the seven-
teenth century; in this case, the mark reflects the censer's derivation from
early Ming bronzes of the Xuande period. After receiving some 39,000
catties (about fourteen and five-eighths tons) of copper as tribute from
the King of Siam in 1427, the Xuande Emperor - Zhu Zhanji (1399-1435), the
fifth emperor of Ming, who ruled as the Xuande Emperor (reign 1426-35),
commissioned the production of thousands of bronzes in 1428 for imperial
altars and for the various offices and halls of the palace. 1 The Emperor
ordered his officials to study both Song ceramics and Song-dynasty illus-
trated catalogs of antiquities in designing the vessels to insure fidelity to
2
antiquity. The Emperor and his ministers would have preferred to use
original Bronze Age vessels as models, but since the imperial collections
had been dispersed or destroyed with the fall of Northern Song in 1127
and of Southern Song in 1279, the court had little choice but to turn to
representations of antique vessels in ceramic ware and in such illustrated
collection catalogs as Kaogu tu (Pictures for the Study of Antiquity) of
1092 by Lu Dalin (1046-1092) and Xuanhe bogu tulu (Xuanhe Album of
Antiquities) of 1123. The reliance upon Song ceramics as models brought a
surpassing level of refinement to Xuande bronzes - evident, according to

T H E R O B E R T H. C L A G U E C O L L E C T I O N 1 1 1