Page 152 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

The flowers depicted on this censer - peony, flowering plum, orchid,
and chrysanthemum - are the same as those on the previous ewer [28],
though the orchid is included here. Indigenous to China, the orchid - in
particular, the epidendrum and cymbidium varieties - attracted early notice
due to its pleasant scent and unusually shaped petals. Confucius is said to
have remarked on the orchid's exquisite qualities, with the result that, like
the bamboo, it is revered as an emblem of the junzi, or Confucian gentle-
man. Regarded by extension as a symbol of refinement and of the cultivated
scholar, 5 the orchid first gained prominence as a subject of Chinese art
during the Yuan dynasty, in the paintings of Zheng Sixiao 6 (1241-1318); it
remained popular as a subject of Chinese painting through the Ming and
Qing dynasties, with such eighteenth-century artists as Zheng Xie (1693-
1765) and Dong Xun (1740-1805) virtually restricting themselves to orchids
and the occasional clump of bamboo. 7 The orchid entered the repertoire
of bronze ornament in the late Ming [see 11] and appeared intermittently
throughout the Qing.
The identity of the flowering branches represented by the handles
remains uncertain, since the trees whose cut branches are most typically
depicted in the decorative arts - plum, peach, pomegranate, and cherry -
have smooth-edged leaves rather than serrated ones. The branches may
represent those of the yellow-fruited loquat, however, which occasionally
appear with serrated leaves on eighteenth-century porcelains with deco-
ration in overglaze enamels. 8
The quatrefoil panels on this censer are akin in shape to those that
sometimes embellish the walls of Qianlong-period porcelain jars, 9 suggest-
ing an eighteenth-century date of manufacture. In addition, the similarity
of the petals in the upper ring of this censer's chrysanthemum collar to
those in the previous ewer's single-ring collar [28] further suggests a mid-
to late eighteenth-century date of origin, as does the extensive reliance
on applique elements.
Like the three previous examples, this raised-copper censer was
entirely cold worked; in most cases seams indicate the join of separately
created pieces that are held together by solder, pins, or tension. Circular
marks on its interior suggest that the censer's body was turned on a lathe,
after which the resulting bowl-like form was modified to create the dis-
tinctive //-tripod shape. Their slightly uneven length and irregular spacing
indicate that the vertical lines separating one lobe from the next were
impressed after the bowl had been lathe turned. Solder secures the cabriole
legs to the censer's body, while solder or pins hold the (dye-struck?)

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