Page 45 - Scholarly Works of Art Hong Kong Sothebys March 3 2019

With a personal interest and deep veneration for antiquities,
the Qianlong Emperor was known to have been a great
collector and connoisseur. His extensive collection was
unsurpassed by any other emperor in Chinese history.
The Qianlong Emperor had a special reverence in jade, in
particular those from the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties.
In fact, the surviving collection of archaic jades in the Qing
court collection was mostly from the personal collection
of the Qianlong Emperor. The Emperor was known to have
been authenticating and classifying his own collection;
and at times composed poems for special pieces of his
endearment. Taking great precautions in keeping his
cherished collection safe, he would commission table
screens crafted from high-quality timber where his treasured
archaic jades would be mounted on, and display them across
various palaces and halls, thus creating a unique interior
setting in the court.
The Qianlong Emperor’s metrical compositions were
prolific, amongst his 40,000 poems, over 800 are related
to jade. He believed that while paper could last a thousand
years, jade – the crystallised essence of heaven and earth
– was indestructible. Consequently, he made a number of
commissions reproducing calligraphic masterpieces on jade,
or engraving his complimentary verses directly on archaic
jades.
The poem, entitled Jade ‘grain’ disc of the Han dynasty, is
recorded in the Qing Gaozong yuzhi shiwen quanji [Anthology
of imperial Qianlong poems and text], Yuzhi shi san ji
[Imperial poetry, vol. 3], juan 37, p. 24 (fig. 1) and can be
translated as follows:

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