Page 18 - Marchant Ninety Jades For 90 Years

五 5. Wrist rest, bige, of bamboo-segment form, carved with the poet Su Dongpo and the monk Foyin and a boy attendant beside the Red

Cliff and a short bridge with their boat moored by the bank below, beside large pine trees, beneath the moon and clouds. Incised with

赤 a sixteen-character inscription from the poet’s Latter Ode to the Red Cliff, and a rectangular seal reading Pian Shi, the curved reverse
壁 plain, the stone of even pale celadon.
夜 5 7/16 inches, 13.8 cm long.
游 Kangxi/Qianlong, 17/18th century.
圖
詩 Wood stand.

文 • From the collection of John Story Jenks (1839-1923), Philadelphia, and thence by descent.
臂 • Another wrist rest, from the collection of Quincy Chuang, carved with a wood cutter amongst rockwork and pine, also beneath
擱
the moon, is illustrated by James C. Y. Watt in Chinese Jades from Han to Ch’ing, An Exhibition Held at Asia House Gallery,

青 New York, 1980, no. 118, p. 142, where the author notes, ‘The treatment of the slightly incoherent landscape is typical of the
白 eighteenth century, the depiction of the rock and water being highly mannered and the figure occupying less of the pictorial
玉 space than it would have in an earlier period’; another, carved with bamboo and a phoenix bird, is illustrated by Li Jiufang in

Zhongguo Yuqi Quanji, ‘Chinese Jade’, Vol. 6, no. 303, p. 209.

康 • A bamboo wrist rest of this form in the Palace Museum, Beijing, Gu Gong Inventory no. Xin 24676, was included by Evelyn S.

熙 Rawski and Jessica Rawson in China the Three Emperors, 1662-1795, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005, no. 133, p. 224;

/ a naturalistic wrist rest in the form of a segment of pine with relief prunus and bamboo branches, from the collection of Diana
乾 Klein, was included by Marchant in their 75th anniversary exhibition, Post-Archaic Chinese Jades from Private Collections, 2000,
隆 no. 37, p. 56.

John Story Jenks • The wrist rest, bige, is used by the scribe to steady his arm when writing.

• The form of this wrist rest is inspired by late Ming and early Qing bamboo examples.

先
生
舊
藏

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