Page 36 - Chinese works of art and paintings, March 19 Bonhams

8036
A FINE AND RARE REPOUSSE PARCEL-GILT SILVER BOWL
Tang Dynasty transformed into a makara, endowed with a dragon’s head, fish fins
Finely worked in repousse with steep, quatrelobed sides, the rim and accompanied by a flaming jewel.
interior banded and gilt with a continuous leafy scroll pattern about
the central well enclosed by a band of overlapping ‘peacock feathers’ Its foreign background and imagery made the makara an auspicious
surrounding a fierce coiled makara in repousse chasing a flaming symbol for use in several extant examples of Tang dynasty silver
pearl amid stylized waves, the well and design also gilt and raised on and gold. A Tang gold cup, excavated in 1983 in Xi’an and now in
a splayed, circular foot incised with a single character qiong and two the Shaanxi History Museum is illustrated by C. Michaelson, Gilded
indicipherable characters on the side and also on the base. Dragons, London, 1999, pp. 98-9, no. 59. while a similarly coiled
8 1/2in (21.5cm) diameter makara with flaming pearl is illustrated by Bo Gyllensvärd in ‘T’ang
Gold and Silver’, Butlletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities,
$80,000 - 120,000 No. 29, Stockholm, 1957, Fig. 56b. As noted in the Lally catalog,
a Tang parcel-gilt silver bowl also with a repoussé dragon-fish in a
唐 鎏金魔羯紋四曲銀碗 central medallion was excavated from Inner Mongolia and is now
in the collection of the Ordos Museum, illustrated in Zhongguo
Provenance meishu fenlei quanji, Zhongguo jin yin boli falang qi quanji, Vol. II,
J.J Lally & Co., New York, 2012 Shijiazhuang, 2004, p. 47, no. 91. A n analogous gilt silver bowl
decorated with a peacock feather band enclosing a repousse
Published medallion of two flying parrots is published as part of the Kempe
J.J Lally & Co., New York, Silver and Gold in Ancient China, Spring Collection in Bo Gyllensvard. Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl
2012, no. 14, and front cover Kempe Collection, no. 118, pp. 182-83.

Few parcel gilt silver bowls from the Tang period have appeared at
With its distinctive curling snout, dragon head and finned body, auction. The most recent and closely related example to this lot, from
the makara may be read as a representation of the mythical carp the illustrious Carl Kempe collection and published in Gyllvensvard,
transforming into a dragon, a metaphor for success as a result of Chinese Gold, Silver and Porcelain, Asia Society, New York, 1971,
assiduous effort. However the origins of this mythical beast is traced p. 52, no. 46, was sold in these Rooms, 14 September 2015, lot
to India and was transmitted to China with the Buddhist canon, the 8073. See a related parcel gilt copper pouring bowl, sold Christie’s,
first datable appearance in the tomb of Li He (d. 583) in Shaanxi London, 7 November 2017, lot 116.
province. In the Buddhist tradition, the makara was originally a
whale that rescued five hundred drowning merchants at sea, and In his catalog entry, Mr. Lally speculates that the legible incised
then sacrificed itself by providing its own body for sustenance. As a character on the side of the foot may be the name of the original
result of its compassionate offering, the whale was immortalized and owner.
34 | BONHAMS