Page 114 - Marchant Ninety Jades For 90 Years

五 59. Standing elephant, xiang, draped with a tasselled cloth, each side with a shou-character medallion on a geometric brocade wan-

十 character ground, with detailed hairwork to the elephant’s tail, the feet neatly finished on the underside, a boy kneeling on its back

九 holding a branch of flowering prunus, the stone white with slight russet markings.

2 ⅞ inches, 7.3 cm high.
童 Qianlong, 1736-1795.
子

戯 • From a private French collection.
象 • Two similar groups, each with two boys, in the Qing court collection, are illustrated by Zhang Guang Wen in The Complete

白 Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Jadeware (II), nos. 137 and 138, pp. 178/9; another is illustrated by Yang Boda
玉 in A Romance with Jade, from the De An Tang Collection, no. 89, p. 149; another with two boys and a vase on the back of the
elephant, is illustrated by Li Jiufang in Zhongguo Yuqi Quanji, ‘Chinese Jade’, Vol. 6, no. 270, p. 187; a further larger example,

乾 with a single boy holding a ruyi sceptre, formerly in the Dumas Collection, was included by Marchant in their 75th anniversary
隆 exhibition, Post-Archaic Chinese Jades from Private Collections, 2000, no. 87, pp. 106/7.

• The subject qixiang, a boy riding an elephant, forms the rebus, ‘May there be good fortune’, as the word is similar to the

pronunciation jixiang, meaning good fortune or auspicious.

• The elephant, xiang, is a symbol of strength, power, prudence and wisdom, and it is sacred to Buddhism. During the Qing

dynasty elephants were used as part of a procession to celebrate the emperor’s birthday.

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