Page 94 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

tops of most Kangxi-period white-jade plaques of Lu Zigang type 9 and in
the dragon roundels that embellish Kangxi beehive-shaped water pots. 10
The exact relationship of these handles to the decorative arts of the Kangxi
period remains uncertain, however, as these dragons are more complex
than those on Kangxi ceramics and jades. Since they show affinities to
works in the Kangxi style and since they are quite different from those on
similarly shaped vessels illustrated in Xuande yiqi tupu, the handles on this
censer may be Kangxi-period replacements for lost originals. If, on the
other hand, the handles are original and thus contemporaneous with the
vessel, perhaps their dragon forms anticipate those of the Kangxi period.
Though unusual, the censer's form is not unique; a close relative - a censer
with identically shaped bowl and base (but with different legs, handles,
and decoration) - was recently published with an attribution to the sev-
enteenth century. 11
Like many late Ming and Qing bronzes, this censer was chemically
treated after casting to produce its warm, russet surface color, a fashion
begun in the Xuande period [compare 15]. The rust-colored ground provides
the perfect foil for the fanciful taotie masks, which, on this censer, are
unusual in having their noses and mouths described by curvilinear bands
of inlaid leiwen scrolls rather than by bands of sheet gold or silver or by a
series of lines inlaid in silver wire. Though without direct classical ante-
cedents, the use of leiwen scrolls to describe the mouth and nose recalls
the so-called 'dissolved' taotie masks that occasionally appear on late
Shang bronzes. 12 Such 'dissolved' taotie masks lack a unifying shield or
escutcheon to draw the parts of the mask together, thus allowing the
mouth, nose, eyes, and other features to float against the ground as flat,
low-relief bands, each band carrying a single row of leiwen scrolls. The
mannered form of the taotie masks points to a seventeenth-century date
of manufacture for this censer.
The fine-line taotie mask on a cast-bronze, ding-shaped censer in the
British Museum, London, has eyebrows inlaid in sheet silver in the same
forked convention as on this censer, not to mention related horns and iden-
13
tically shaped leiwen coils. The presence of a two-character mark on its base
reading Xuande has led to the censer's attribution to the early fifteenth
century, but, like the Clague piece, it must date to the seventeenth; the
similarity in the style of the inlaid decoration suggests that both pieces
came from the same workshop. Lacking authentic Xuande examples, these
imitations, and the one in the previous entry, shed light on the sophisticated
forms of early fifteenth-century imperial bronzes.

1 10 C H I N A ' S R E N A I S S A N C E IN B R O N Z E