Page 174 - Bonhams Chinese Art London May 2013

Detail The Property of a Western Private Collection
fig. 1 A pale green jade incense burner and cover, Qianlong;
image courtesy of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
170 | Bonhams
西方私人藏品
139 *
A rare white jade ‘sanyang’ incense burner and cover
Qianlong
Crisply and exquisitely carved from white jade, the censer with
a decorative band around the body containing stylised archaistic
scrolls divided by six columns of low flanges, three ending in an
animal-head foot, the censer with two handles each formed as a
bird facing outwards with strongly-curving wings reaching back
to the censer, the body ending in a bifurcated scroll, the cover
similarly carved with a decorative band and flanges, beneath
three elegant ram-heads, each with long ears and a pair of
twisted horns, all surmounted by the reticulated finial carved
with a front-facing dragon grasping the flaming pearl amid cloud
scrolls, wood stand.
18cm (7in) wide (3).
£80,000 - 120,000
HK$940,000 - 1,400,000 CNY750,000 - 1,100,000
清乾隆 白玉雕三羊開泰紋雙耳蓋爐
Provenance: Sotheby’s London, 28th October 1983, lot 201
Later acquired from Roger Keverne Ltd., London, on 27 October
1998
A Western private collection
來源：倫敦蘇富比，1983年10月28日，拍品編號201
後來在1998年10月27日購於倫敦古董商Roger Keverne
西方私人收藏
The present white jade incense burner and cover is Imperial
in its symbolic carving, from the exquisite dragon finial to the
phoenix handles, traditionally associated with the Emperor and
Empress respectively. For a similar pale green jade incense burner
and cover, Qianlong, but without the sanyang and with tubular
feet, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, see R. Lefebvre
d’Argencé, Chinese Jades in the Avery Brundage Collection, San
Francisco, 1977, pl.LIV (see fig. 1 lower left).
The rare incense burner is unusually carved in high relief on the
cover with the san yang. The image of the sheep or goat, 羊
yang, appeared as early as the Han Dynasty as a pun for 祥 xiang
meaning auspicious or lucky. By the Qing period, the image of
sheep had become heavily associated with 陽 yang, meaning
the sun, and the warm, positive or masculine force in Chinese
cosmology.
The sheep imagery then developed into three sheep, 三羊
sanyang, often with three boys 三陽 sanyang, as a reference
to the favourable arrival of spring, since the phrase 三陽開泰
sanyang kai tai, refers to the period between the winter solstice
and the New Year. This was the period when the warm yang
energy is emergent, as detailed in the ancient Chinese classic the
Yijing, or Book of Changes.