Page 69 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain, The Getty Museum

FIG. IOB

Each ensemble stands on a shaped base of gilt sphere, suspended from a cord that passes through its
bronze with a repeating leaf motif around the edge. body and ends in a tassel, is illustrated in Bushell's Ori-
Upon the upper surface of this mount, around the bor- ental Ceramic Art. 1
der, are gilt-bronze lizards, snails, and small leafy twigs, The two boys, when standing alone, represent hap-
irregularly placed (fig. IOD). The boy stands on a low piness and longevity. The decoration on their clothes
open-work plinth of gilt bronze. The lid and the upper includes cranes, clouds, peaches, and bats, which sym-
rim of the pierced sphere are framed with gilt-bronze bolize these two aspects. The pine needles painted on
moldings. Scattered porcelain flowers with gilt-bronze the trousers of one of the boys also represent longevity,
leaves are attached to the pierced sphere, which rests in while the peacocks on the rockwork are associated with
a calyx of gilt-bronze leaves. Emerging from the leaves a lofty and virtuous disposition.
are leafy branches of gilt bronze to which porcelain flow- Itinerant entertainers are often shown in French
ers are attached. These overhang the top of the porce- paintings and engravings of the eighteenth century ex-
lain rock. Similar branches with porcelain flowers are hibiting portable magic lanterns or "peep shows" to vil-
placed between the lion and the lid of the pierced sphere. lage children; it is possible that these composite groups
derive from an image of that sort. 2 Few such assem-
MARKS None. blages of mounted porcelain survive. This is partly due
to their extreme fragility. They rarely, for example, ap-
COMMENTARY pear in the great English collections formed shortly after
The lions, figures, and pierced spheres have been the French Revolution. Many must have been broken
repaired. and discarded during the course of the nineteenth and
The pierced porcelain balls have a prototype in the early twentieth centuries.
metalwork of the Tang dynasty (618-906), specifically A pair of candelabra of somewhat similar concep-
the gold and silver incense holders of the eighth cen- tion was sold at Christie's in 1897, from the collection
tury. By the Qianlong reign they were used to hold pot- of Sir Charles Booth Bart:
pourri and often had polychrome decoration. A single

5 6 P A I R O F D E C O R A T I V E G R O U P S