Page 34 - Sotheby's Imperial Chiense Porcelain Nov 4 2020 London

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PROPERTY OF A SWISS COLLECTOR This seal belongs to a special group of seals known as yibao, the practice of maintaining two sets of imperial jade albums
A RARE SPINACH-GREEN JADE ‘DRAGON’ or posthumous seals. Such seals were not created to be used and seals between the former and current capitals. When a
SEAL WITH THE POSTHUMOUS TITLE OF THE during the lifetimes of emperors and empresses but rather new emperor added to his predecessors’ posthumous titles,
were produced after their deaths as part of the system of
officials and craftspeople would be tasked with recarving.
EMPRESS RENXIAO ancestral temples and posthumous naming in China. The As of the fourteenth year of the Guangxu reign (1888), when
QING DYNASTY, JIAQING PERIOD present was created in the early 19th century for the first wife posthumous seals were sent to Shengjing for the last time,
of the Kangxi Emperor, Empress Xiaochengren, who tragically the Ancestral Temple in Shengjing housed a total of thirty-
carved with a pair of addorsed dragons on a substantial stone died after giving birth to her second son, Yingren, at the age of two posthumous imperial seals, and that in Beijing housed
of square form, each powerfully rendered with their mouths twenty. a total of forty, including those of emperors from Zhaozu
slightly agape and flaring nostrils, further detailed with scaly Yuanhuangdi to Tongzhi.
bodies and flowing manes, pierced through the centre with an In Chinese history, the worship and posthumous naming of
aperture tied with a tassel, the seal face carved with a twenty- emperors and empresses were an important component In the chaos of the early twentieth century, the forty seals in
one character inscription in seal script reading Xiaocheng of court rules governed by explicit and strict regulations. Beijing were lost and dispersed around the world, one of which
gongsu zhenghui anhe shuyi kemin litian xiangsheng ren Posthumous imperial seals were an essential category of is believed to be the present seal. In the second year of the
huanghou zhi bao (‘The Treasure of Express Xiaochengren artefacts created to be included in these rituals. Xuantong reign (1910), the Qing court remade these seals,
[her posthumous title bestowed by the Qianlong emperor]’), In the forty-fifth year of the Qianlong reign (1780), the emperor which are now mostly in the collection of the Palace Museum in
followed by a Manchurian inscription, the stone of deep- decreed that a new set of posthumous imperial jade seals be Beijing. Due to time constraints and financial difficulties faced
spinach green tone with darker inclusions made and dedicated at the Ancestral Temple in Beijing, and by the court, these later creations were of considerably lower-
9.5 by 13 by 13 cm, 3⅝ by 5⅛ by 5⅛ in. that the old ones would be dedicated at the Ancestral Temple quality craftsmanship than the originals.
in Shengjing. The old posthumous imperial seals had been A seal inscribed with the posthumous title of the Qianlong
‡ £ 150,000-250,000 made on an ad hoc basis and thus were of different colours Emperor, produced in the Jiaqing period, held in the Shenyang
and qualities; thus the new set would be of the same size Palace, is published in Shenyang gugong bowuguan can
清嘉慶 碧玉交龍鈕仁孝皇后尊諡寶璽 and form, with finials in the shape of dragons and crafted jingpin daxi. Gongting yiwu juan [Compendium of Collection
uniformly from Khotan jade. By 1782 these sixteen new seals in the Shenyang Palace Museum: Relics of the Qing Court
印文： were completed and dedicated by the Qianlong Emperor at the Collection], Shenyang, 2017, pl. 14, together with closely
Ancestral Temple. The following year, he ordered Yonglang, related posthumous seals for the Jiaqing, Xianfeng and
《孝誠恭肅正惠安和淑懿恪敏儷天襄聖仁皇后之寳》
Prince Yi, and others to send the sixteen old jade albums and Tongzhi and Guangxu Emperors made in their succeeding
seals to the Ancestral Temple in Shengjing, thereby beginning reigns, ibid., pls 15-18.

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