Page 67 - Sotheby's Asian Art PARIS, December 10, 2019

Archaism in the decorative arts of later dynastic China 18th century jades, see Regina Krahl, ,Chinese Jade before
came in many different disguises. Interest in the past Qianlong’, in The Woolf Collection of Chinese Jade, London,
influenced objects in many different materials, especially 2013, pp. 48-59.
those made made in bronze and jade, two materials that The present vessel is rare and only few comparable pieces
were the foundations of material culture in pre-dynastic of related shape are known. Among them is a phoenix-
Chinese history. While some objects faithfully followed shaped vessel with dragon handle, dated to the mid-Qing
archaic forms, designs, techniques and materials, others period from the Palace Museum Collection in Beijing, and
such as this charming jade vessel, can be seen as more illustrated in Zhongguo yuqi quanji, Vol. 6, Shijiazhuang,
playful interpretations of archaic models.
1993, col. pl. 37 (Fig. 1). Another vessel of slightly different
Few features point to the appropriation of an archaic shape featuring a phoenix, also from the Palace Museum
prototype for this vessel. With its gently flared rim tapering Collection, is published in Compendium of Collections
to a narrow body, the vessel that rises from the back in the Palace Museum, Jade, vol. 10, Qing Dynasty, Hefei,
of the phoenix is shaped like the upper part of a of a 2011, p. 116, col. pl. 84. A third piece, carved with a
bronze hu. However, the handle to one side of the vessel lozenge-shaped vessel supported by a phoenix, from the
and its slightly elongated shape point to a bronze guang. collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, is published in
The vessel is borne on the back of a recumbent phoenix, Robert Kleiner, Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan
with its head leaning against the side of the vessel and and Simone Kleiner, Hong Kong, 1996, col. pl. 144. Finally,
its elaborate tail offering further support. Its wings are compare also with a white jade phoenix vessel, sold at
finely carved with archaistic scrolls, a pattern that is Bonhams Hong Kong, 29th May 2018, lot 27.
repeated around the neck of the vessel. These archaistic
motifs provide the only reference to an archaic model.
As Jessica Rawson observed, ‘a considerable degree of
misunderstanding was allowed, it appears deliberately, and
it is likely that the importance of the actual associations of
the ancient shapes was never fully appreciated’, in Chinese
Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, p. 90.
Rawson continues and notes that ‘the weak links between
ancient objects and their later copies and the loss, or
disregard, of the proper ancient associations made a full
understanding and reproduction of the past impossible.
What seems to have been important in Song times and
later were the ways in which the past could be used to
benefit the present’, ibid., p. 90.
Vessels of this fine quality were made in the Palace
Workshops (Zaobanshu), established by the Kangxi
emperor (1662-1722). A special jade workshop was
added in the first year of the Yongzheng emperor’s reign
(1723-1735) to make many of the jades that were on
display around the many rooms of the imperial palace.
We may assume that this small jade phoenix vessel had
an elaborately made fitted stand fashioned of precious
wood, ivory or lacquer. Among the works of art illustrated
on the Guwantu (Pictures of Antiquity), dated 1728, are
some two hundred jades, both archaic and archaistic. Fig. 1 Phoenix-shaped jade rhyton with dragon handle, Mid-
Like the present vessel, the later jades depicted on Qing period, Palace Museum, Beijing, Zhongguo yuqi quanji,
the Guwantu represent the finesse and sophistication of Vol. 6, Shijiazhuang, 1993, col. pl. 37.

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