Page 62 - Bonhams Art from the Scholar's Studio, September 16, 2013 NY

8103
A rare and important cast bronze incense burner and cover in the shape of a goose
Ming dynasty
Cast with tiny openings on its elongated neck and open bill as it crouches on webbed feet, the
curving shafts and barbs of intricately detailed feathers forming symmetrical patterns across the
neck and upper body of the cover and repeating on the thighs raised in slight relief from the
curving base, the feet attached by tenons to an oval plinth separately cast in the form of a lotus
pod trimmed with a row of stamens and overlapping petals.
14 1/2in (37cm) high
$80,000 - 120,000
This lot is closely related to a gilt bronze censer of similar size sold in Christie’s, New York Sale 1639,
29 March 2006, lot 320. The Christie’s goose censer lacks the attached lotus plinth of this lot; but
both display very similar arrangements of feathers on their bodies, extending even to the feather
tuft in the form of a ruyi lappet on each forehead. These two censers, in turn, are closely related
to a Ming bronze standing duck censer, ascribed to the 14th/15th century, imported from China
to Japan and now preserved in the Tokugawa Museum of Art: see the exhibition The Shogun Age
Exhibition, Tokyo, 1983, cat. no. 75, illustrated on p. 107. Among other features, the Tokugawa
duck shares with the two goose censers a scalloped border that separates the smoothly finished
surface of the neck region from the intricately worked layers of feathers across the back. The
Tokugawa Museum duck is attached to a rectangular footed plinth instead of the elaborate lotus
support of the Bonhams censer; but both are similar in their dark chocolate brown patina.
For the evolution of bird-shaped vessels in Chinese bronze culture as well as the importance of
Ming period bronzes preserved in Japan, see Rose Kerr, Later Chinese Bronzes, London, 1990, pp.
14-16 and pp. 80-82.

60 | Bonhams