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Bronze boshanlu censer inlaid with gold

1
Height 26.0 (lO /*), diam. 15.5 (6V&)
Western Han Dynasty, late second century BCE
(c. 113)
From the tomb of Liu Sheng at Lingshan,
Mancheng, Hebei Province

Hebei Provincial Museum, Shijiazhuang

1
The censer is exceptional both in its casting
and in its fine inlaid decoration. Swirling dragons
emerge from an openwork circular foot to support
a cup-shaped basin; the sea surges around large
rocks, which rise to form peaks around the basin's
lip. A tall rocky mountain, populated by small relief
creatures and humanlike beings, forms the lid (fig.
i), pierced by large holes between the crags.
Solid gold bands with fine incised lines form
the censer's base. Thin linear inlays and small
striations and circles indicate the texture of the
dragons' skin. The waves and their breaking crests
are imaginatively suggested by large inlaid gold
scrolls with pointed tips and small cloudlike exten-
sions, echoed in striations on the outcrops and on
the mountain itself. While the inlay closely resem-
bles a cloud scroll, it is plausibly a representation
of qi — the ultimate force or power of the universe,
embodied in clouds or moving waters, out of which
"all things condense and into which they dissolve." 2
(The concept of qi was formulated gradually during
the latter part of the Eastern Zhou period and
dominated Chinese thought from the Han period
onward.)
Such boshanlu ("universal mountain") censers
were common during the Western Han, but do not
seem to have existed prior to that period. During
the Late Eastern Zhou period, other forms of
censers seem to have been used, including open-
work bucket-shaped bronzes, which supported
burning aromatic branches or twigs. Earlier ceramic
and metalwork censers were formed by bowls on
stemmed feet, often with openwork covers com-
3
posed of animal figures ; some of these resemble
creatures employed in decorative bronzework by
peoples on the borders of the Han empire, and it is

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