Page 99 - March 17 2017 Chinese Art NYC, Christies

The interior of the zitan cover bears an inscription, ‘mianmian guatie (a profusion of gourds) dated xinwei
year (1931), frst month, Treasure of Chunweng (old man Chun),’ followed by Xu Hanqing’s collection
seal.’ An inscription on the interior of the box reads, ‘obtained in xinwei year (1931), frst month.’

Xu Fubing (artistic name Hanqing and studio name Chunzhai) was born in 1883, in Yancheng, Jiangsu
province and died in the 1950s. In his early career, he was a chief oficial with the Chinese Qing-
dynasty government and later, in the early Republican period, a co-founder and President of Continental
Bank. While a banker by profession, Xu was also an accomplished calligrapher with a passion for
the traditional arts. Formed over the course of his lifetime, Xu’s collection covers a broad spectrum
of bronze, jade, calligraphy, painting, porcelain, paper play, and miscellaneous items. In addition to
being highly regarded amongst his peers as a collector, he was also an art historian and an expert in
inscriptions and textual research.

The fne carving of the box is stylistically similar to that of six zitan boxes with Qianlong inscriptions that
contain archaistic ink stones in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, illustrated in Through the Prism
of the Past: Antiquarian Trends in Chinese Art of the 16th to 18th Century, Taipei, 2003, p. 112, pl. II-21.
Another of these boxes, formerly in the J. M. Hu Collection, inscribed Qianlong yuyong (for the personal
use of Qianlong), which accompanied a clay tiger-form inkstone, was sold at Christie’s New York, 15
September 2009, lot 237.

(additional views)

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