Page 125 - 2019 September 12th Christie's New York Chiense Art Masterpieces of Chinese Gold and Silver

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A PAIR OF GOLD FILIGREE HAIRPINS
10TH-13TH CENTURY OR LATER
The ornate head of each double-pronged hairpin is comprised of a very
fne sheet of delicate latticework decorated with a small bird with a leafy
spray in its beak below a scrolling meander, all outlined in fne twisted
wire and enclosed within a geometric border.
Each 7Ω in. (19 cm.) long; weight 35.8 and 34.3 g (2)
$30,000-50,000

PROVENANCE
Dr. Johan Carl Kempe (1884-1967) Collection, Sweden, before 1953,
no. CK45.
Sotheby’s London, Masterpieces of Chinese Precious Metalwork.
Early Gold and Silver, 14 May 2008, lot 91.

EXHIBITED
Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution, Chinese Gold & Silver in the
Carl Kempe Collection, 1954-55, cat. no. 45.
New York, Asia House Gallery, Chinese Gold, Silver and Porcelain. The
Kempe Collection, 1971, cat. no. 20, an exhibition touring the United
States and shown also at nine other museums.
LITERATURE
Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Gold & Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection,
Stockholm, 1953, cat. no. 45.
Bo Gyllensvärd, ‘T’ang Gold and Silver’, Bulletin of the Museum of Far
Eastern Antiquities, No. 29, Stockholm, 1957, fgs. 13h, 53a, 77b.
Chinese Gold & Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, The Museum of Art
and Far Eastern Antiquities in Ulricehamn, Ulricehamn, 1999, pl. 44.

A related gold hairpin, also decorated with an area of fligree openwork
in the head of the hairpin, is illustrated in Celestial Creations: Art of the
Chinese Goldsmith, The Cheng Xun Tang Collection, vol. I, Art Museum,
Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
2007, no. C04. See, also, the example illustrated by Simon Kwan and
Sun Ji, Chinese Gold Ornaments, Hong Kong, 2003, pp. 346-47, pl. 197.
Both of these hairpins are dated to the Tang dynasty.
十/十三世紀或更晚 金累絲花鳥紋釵一對

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