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A PALE GREEN JADE DUCK-FORM This charming box is notable for the combination This box stems from a long tradition of employing
BOX AND COVER of plumage and geometric motifs that adorn the duck as a vessel form, rst produced as a
SONG DYNASTY its body. The smooth contours of the body and censer in the Han dynasty (206BC-AD220), which
naturalistic face provide an attractive contrast also was similarly made in two sections; see one
skillfully modeled with the duck’s head turned with the archaistic angular bands of decoration. formerly in the collection of Arlene and Harold
slightly to the right and wings neatly tucked, the Early bird-form boxes are rare and more appear Schnitzer and now in the Portland Art Museum,
cover well rendered in the form of its upper torso, to have been produced from the Ming dynasty; illustrated in Donald Jenkins, Mysterious Spirits,
see a goose-form box and cover sold at Christie’s Strange Beasts, Earthly Delights. Early Chinese Art
nely incised with plumage, the well- tted box New York, 31st December 1992, lot 51; and from the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Collection,
worked as its lower body, incised with a mythical a quail-form example attributed to the 17th Portland Art Museum, Portland, 2005, pp 80-81;
century, from the collection of Gerald Godfrey and another in the form of a pigeon, from the
gure, animal and dragon, all supported on an and included in the exhibition Chinese Jades from Rutherston collection, published in Albert J. Koop,
oval base, the softly polished stone of a pale Han to Ch’ing, Asia House Gallery, New York, Early Chinese Bronzes, London, 1924, pl. 59b.
celadon-tinged white color with patches of dark 1980, cat. no. 134. The present box, however, is
brown inclusions (2) unusual for the stepped foot. Compare a yellow $ 100,000-150,000
Width 4⅜ in., 11 cm jade carving of a duck, attributed to the Southern
Song period, in the National Palace Museum,
PROVENANCE included in the Museum’s exhibition Dynastic
Renaissance. Art and Culture of the Southern
Christie’s Hong Kong, 30th May 2005, lot 1564. Song, Taipei, 2010, cat. no. III-36.
2005 5 30 1564
IMPORTANT CHINESE ART 227
