Page 150 - Marchant Ninety Jades For 90 Years

八 80. Baluster vase and cover of tapered form, carved in high relief with a prunus tree, its flowering branches continuing around the shoulder

十 to the reverse, above bamboo, lingzhi and narcissus, all issuing from rockwork, the underside naturalistically finished as rockwork, the

cover with lappets beneath a rope-twist finial, the stone pale celadon with slight russet markings.
齊 8 inches, 20.3 cm high.
眉 Qianlong, 1736-1795.
祝 Finely carved zitan-wood stand with ruyi branches.
壽

圖 • From the collection of the Widener Family, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
蓋 The family and descendants of Peter Arrell Brown Widener (1834-1915) and his wife Hannah Josephine Dunton (1836-1896)
瓶 were from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and were one of the wealthiest families in the United States. In 1883 Widener was part

青 of the founding partnership of the Philadelphia Traction Company and used the great wealth accumulated from that business to
白 become a founding organiser of U.S. Steel and the American Tobacco Company. Their legacy includes the Widener Library at
玉 Harvard University and the Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. Their descendants became one the prominent factors

in American thoroughbred horseracing history, as well as founding benefactors of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C.

乾 • A similar vase, in the Qing Court collection, is illustrated by Zhang Guang Wen in, The Complete Collection of Treasures of

隆 the Palace Museum, Jadeware (III), Vol. 42, no. 67, p. 79, and again by Xu Xiao Dong in Compendium of Collections in the

Palace Museum, Jade, Vol. 10, Qing Dynasty, Gu Gong Inventory no. Gu 102551, no. 37, p. 64, where the author illustrates

another related vase with rockwork, Gu Gong Inventory no. Gu 87629, no. 38, p. 65; another, in the Qing Court collection

is illustrated by Zhang Guang Wen in, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Jadeware (II), no. 17, p. 23;

yet another, is illustrated by Kao Yu-chen and Lin Shwu-shih in Jade: Ch’ing Dynasty Treasures, from the National Museum of

History, Taiwan, no. 113, p. 180.

• The plum blossom or prunus, meihua, is the first flower to bloom each year. It is a symbol of spring, perseverance, purity and

renewal, and like bamboo, zhu, it is one of the three friends of winter, sui han san you. It is depicted here with lingzhi, a symbol

of longevity and narcissus, shuixian, forming a further rebus, tianxian gongshou, ‘May the heavenly immortals honour you with

longevity’. The narcissus is known as the immortal water flower.

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