Page 102 - Important Chinese Art Hong Kong April 2, 2019 Sotheby's

Fig. 1 Fig. 2
Jade double vase, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period Celadon jade double vase, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period
Qing court collection © Collection of the Tianjin Museum
© Collection of the Palace Museum Beijing
圖二
圖一 清乾隆 青玉鳳螭紋雙聯瓶
清乾隆 玉雙聯尊 清宮舊藏 © 天津市藝術博物館藏品
© 北京故宮博物院藏品

This passage illustrates how the Chinese in ancient times Apart from its imperial provenance, the present vase was
considered Heaven to be round and Earth to be square, and also in the collection of the prominent Hong Kong shipping
the two together were compared to the round umbrella-like tycoon and real estate developer T.Y. Chao (1912-1999).
form of the canopy and square body of the chariot. Heaven Chao had already been collecting Chinese ceramics for
thus became the dome that covered the flat Earth. This decades, from the 1960s, when he started buying jade
cosmological perspective, known as the ‘Canopy Heaven objects with a preference for large and imposing pieces. 6
(gaitian)’, was also used to explain how celestial bodies While no two jade carvings are ever the same, see a double-
turned around the celestial pole in daily orbits in a plane
parallel to the earth’s surface. 4 zun shaped vase from the Qing court collection illustrated in
The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum.
Bearing the above in mind, we can see that the vase Jadeware (III), Hong Kong, 1995, no. 145 (fig. 1); and another
is imbued with imperial symbolism and thus is almost conjoined piece published in Zhongguo yuqi quanji [Complete
certainly an object made on imperial order. Its fine carving, collection of Chinese jades], vol. 6: Qing, Shijiazhuan, 1993,
material and imaginative artistic composition corroborates pl. 236 (fig. 2). See also a yellow jade archaic form vase
its attribution to the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (r. carved with climbing chilong around the body included ibid.,
1735-1796) who was an avid collector of outstanding jade pl. 241; together with two examples of white jade vases of
carvings. From the imperial records we know that Qianlong’s conjoined forms, pls 243 and 244.
jade collection surpassed that of any of his predecessors in
1 Zhou li zhengyi [Rectification of the Rites of Zhou], Beijing, 2000, 35.1390.
quantity and quality, and two-thirds of the more than thirty- 2 See Lillian Lan-ying Tseng, Picturing Heaven in Early China, London and
thousand jade pieces in the Palace Museum today were Cambridge, 2011, p. 43.
either acquired or made during his reign. Furthermore, he 3 Yan Kejun, Quan shangshu sandai wen, 10.2a, vol. 1 of Quan shangshu sandy
was not only an enthusiastic collector of jades, but a great Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen. Translation in Tseng, op.cit., p. 45.
patron of artists working in the imperial palace workshops 4 See Tseng, op.cit., p. 47 for more information on the cosmological aspect of
where creative and exciting pieces, such as the present vase, the Canopy Heaven. See also Dirk L. Couprie, ‘An Ancient Chinese Flat Earth
would have been produced to cater for his exacting personal Cosmology,’ Tsinghua Journal of Western Philosophy, 2016, no. 3.
taste. 5 5 On Qianlong as a collector see Hajni Elias, ‘Qianlong: The Imperial Collector,’
Arts of Asia, 2006, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 66-84.
6 Giuseppe Eskenazi and Hajni Elias, A Dealer’s Hand. The Chinese Art World
Through the Eyes of Giuseppe Eskenazi, London, 2012, pp. 113-4.