Page 6 - Marchant Ninety Jades For 90 Years

INTRODUCTION
It is with great pleasure that Marchant presents our 90th
anniversary exhibition, Ninety Jades for 90 Years.
The first catalogue that I was given the honour of writing was for
our jade exhibition in 2000, to celebrate the 75th Anniversary
of the gallery. Our esteemed resident scholar and partner, Mr
David S. Freedman, had retired from Marchant in 1999 after
30 years of sterling service, and the task was passed to me.
Fortunately, David still agrees to proofread our catalogues.
Jade is my favourite subject and was the first form of Chinese
art that I was exposed to as a young boy. Due to its being
one of the hardest material known to man, my grandfather,
Samuel Sydney Marchant, the founder of our gallery, allowed
me to handle the pieces on my visits to the gallery. Its tactile
nature and coolness to the hand is the first and most obvious
attraction. Natalie, my daughter and the fourth generation of
Marchant, also has a penchant for jades; she will publish her
first article on the subject in the November/December edition
of this year’s Arts of Asia magazine.
In February 2014, to celebrate her 25th birthday, we travelled
to Australia as I had been asked to give lectures at the Gallery of years.’ This is a good example of how fashions change.
New South Wales in Sydney and at Moss Green’s in Melbourne.
The title of my lecture was ‘Ming and Qing Ceramics, Collecting
and Dealing, A Personal Perspective’, where one of the points
that I emphasized was the importance of provenance. As years
go by, this will become even more important. In the present
exhibition every piece has its history and provenance.
The most exceptional piece in this exhibition is the Hodgson
Rhyton, no. 88, also illustrated on the front cover. It has both
impeccable provenance and a historical link to Marchant
through the family, who actively purchased porcelain and jades
from Marchant in the 1960s and 1970s. It is because of this
client dealer relationship, that the family have asked us to offer
this piece on their behalf. The Rhyton was included by the
Oriental Ceramic Society in their famous exhibition of Chinese
Jade Throughout the Ages at the Victoria & Albert Museum in
1975. It belongs to a specific group of archaic-style jades that
are incised and dated with poems composed by the Qianlong
emperor. This piece, together with the three others that I
mention in the catalogue, are all dated to a specific year.
The Qianlong emperor, one of the great patrons of the arts,
was famous for his poetry. His contemporary commissions in
all disciplines are unrivalled, particularly ceramics and jades.
Due to his scholarship and study of the classics this influenced
his appreciation for ancient objects. Perhaps he was particularly
influenced by his father, the Yongzheng emperor, whose love
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of Song dynasty ceramics is well known and documented.
From the beginning of his reign he commissioned poems to
be painted on imperially marked porcelain pieces. It appears
that approximately half way through his reign, from 1765
onwards, imperial poems with dates and seals were now incised
on the bodies of Song ceramics and archaic-style jades. Stacey
Pierson and Amy Barnes illustrate sixteen Song and Yuan
pieces of Guan, Ru, Ge and Jun in their book, A Collector’s
Vision: Ceramics for the Qianlong Emperor, 2002, where the
authors liken the inscriptions and seals to those on paintings.
They also mention that once the imperial inscriptions were
incised on the jades, the Qianlong emperor gave the pieces a
new function. A particularly amusing poem, dated to the ji
you year, corresponding to 1789, appears on a Guan-ware,
Southern-Song dynasty incense burner from the Percival
David Foundation Collection, no. PDF 17, now at the British
Museum, where the Qianlong emperor notes, ‘When it was
made, this vessel was deemed unfit for sale by the court official.
Now it is a treasure of the table, hallowed by the passing of the
My father, Richard, recalls how when he was young, spinach
jade vessels were more sought after than their white jade
counterparts. Today’s obsession with white-jades, at the
expense of other coloured material, has led to opportunities
for both dealers and collectors to acquire outstanding examples
of spinach jade. In this exhibition we have a number of
exceptional spinach pieces. The last piece in the catalogue,
the imperially marked Jiaqing vase, no. 90, was also inspired
by an ancient piece, probably a bronze vessel. Carved from a
massive block and weighing over 5 kilos, it is remarkable for the
time it must have taken to produce a vase of such outstanding
craftsmanship. Closely related pieces are in the Gu Gong
Collection in the Forbidden City. Sadly, as with no. 82, the
white vase from the collection of Captain James Gunter, it
would originally have had a cover that is now lost.
Another remarkable example of spinach jade is the pair
of openwork cylindrical incense holders, no. 81, acquired
privately from descendants of the previous owner. They display
a feature that my father and I often look for in jades. In China
this is known as yangke, in Japan it is described as yukibori,
a technique where the craftsman carves the veins of a leaf or
fruit in relief. Compared to incised work, this process would
have been considerably more time-consuming to manufacture,
especially when one considers the tools available and surface
area being worked.
To curate a meaningful jade exhibition requires groups of
pieces from respected collections. The pieces from the Marquis