Page 419 - Bonhams Chinese Art London May 2013

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An extremely rare horn and lacquer lantern
Qianlong/ Jiaqing
The ten-lobed melon-shaped lantern applied on each lobe with
alternating descending dragon and phoenix amidst colourful cloud
scrolls composed of enamelled horn sections, below a gilt-lacquer
crown adorned with ruyi-heads, lotus-petal panels, floral scrolls, key-fret
and wave borders surmounted by the everted openwork lotus sprays
divided by flanges, and above a similar spreading base suspending
strings of glass-beads, all suspended from the gilt multi-coloured
lacquer five-petal crown with woven seed-pearls and glass strings and
tassels, decorated with openwork borders below the everted lotus
shaped petals each with stylised archaistic dragons flanking a ruyi-
head enclosing a shou character in the centre, all below the openwork
superstructure and encircled by five glass-inlaid gilt bronze cloud pins
suspending long tassels and mother-of-pearl plaques.
130cm (51 1/4in) high. (14).
£5,000 - 7,000
HK$59,000 - 82,000 CNY47,000 - 66,000

清乾隆/嘉慶 角雕漆金十瓣瓜稜式掛燈

Imperial lanterns such as the present lot served a double purpose
of lighting and adorning the Imperial palaces. A painting attributed
to Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) in the Palace Museum, titled
Emperor Qianlong’s Pleasure during Snowy Weather, circa 1738, depicts
the Emperor amidst his children between two related globular lamps
suspending tassels; see Chuimei Ho and B.Bronson, Splendors of China’s
Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong, London, 2004,
pl.232. Other similar and related Imperial lanterns still adorn the halls
of the Forbidden City, composed from materials such as horn, lacquer,
glass, cloisonné, tassels and beads, see Wan Yi, Wang Shuqing and
Lu Yanzhen, eds., Classics of the Forbidden City: Life in the Forbidden
City of Qing Dynasty, Beijing, 2007, pls.176-177 and see also another
painting depicting the Qianlong Emperor below two related lanterns,
ibid., pl.430. Lanterns in the Chu Xiu Gong and Chang Chun Gong, the
Forbidden City, are illustrated in Ming Qing gongting jiazhu daguan,
vol.II, Beijing, 2006, pls.776 and ibid., vol.I, pls.413-414. Another similar
horn lantern (but missing the upper section), dated early 18th century,
reportedly from the Summer Palace, Chengde and now in the British
Museum (no.1942,0714.1), is illustrated by R.Soame Jenyns in Chinese
Art, vol.III, Oxford, 1981, pl.149. See also Yang Boda, Tributes from
Guangdong to the Imperial Court, Hong Kong, 1987, fig.11 for a lamp
in the Eastern Chamber of the Yangxin Hall in the Forbidden City, and
ibid., fig.14 for a lamp in the Western Chamber of the same Yangxin
Hall; the author notes that this hall was where the Imperial workshops
were located in the 18th/19th century.

Lord Macartney’s important account of his Embassy to the Imperial
Court, Beijing, in 1793-1794 describes the method by which horn
lanterns were made:

‘The usual method of managing them, according to the information
obtained on the spot, is to bind the horn by immersion in boiling water,
after which it is cut open and flattened; it then easily scales and is
separated into two or three thin laminae or plates. In order that these
plates should be made to join, they are exposed to the penetrating
effect of steam, by which they are rendered almost perfectly soft. In
this state the edges of the pieces to be joined are carefully scraped and
slanted off so that pieces overlapping each other shall together exceed
the thickness of the plate of any other part. By applying the edges thus
prepared immediately to each other and pressing them with pincers,
they intimately adhere, and, incorporating, form one substance, similar
in every respect to the other parts, and thus uniform pieces of horn may
be prepared to almost any extent.’ See ibid., note to pl.149.

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