Page 120 - Christies Asia Week 2015 Chinese Works of Art

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT AMERICAN COLLECTION
2079
A LARGE IMPERIAL CLOISONNÉ ENAMEL TRIPOD CENSER AND COVER
QIANLONG PERIOD (1736-1795)

The censer’s globular sides are fnely decorated with cranes and deer in a landscape setting of
tree-studded grasslands below colorful cloud scrolls, repeated around the waisted neck and
below the rim. The designs extend further to the ‘S’-shaped handles and on the domed cover
where they are enclosed by ruyi-head borders over scrolling peony in openwork. The cover
is surmounted by a openwork gilt-metal fnial of a coiled dragon amidst cloud scrolls in high
relief above lotus petals. The censer is supported on the backs of three cranes, their arched
necks bent to look backwards.
38 in. (96.5 cm.) overall high

$200,000-300,000

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby Parke Bernet Monaco S.A., 4 March 1984, lot 261.

EXHIBITED:

Dallas, The Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, Five Colors: Chinese Vessels
on Loan from the Mandel Family Collection, 28 August 2010 - 19 June 2011.

An almost identical censer, and probably the pair to the present censer, is in the Pierre Uldry
Collection, illustrated by H. Brinker and A. Lutz, Chinese Cloisonné: The Pierre Uldry Collection, New
York, 1989, pl. 323. The Uldry example, together with a large basin, pl. 322, are both attributed to
the Imperial workshops. The authors note in relation to the censer and basin from the same collection:
“an almost simultaneous origin in the second half of the eighteenth century, and in one and the same
workshop, presumably the palace workshop in Beijing, can be unreservedly claimed for both pieces”,
p. 141.
There are a number of other published examples of similar censers supported by cranes. One very
similar example is in the British Museum, illustrated in China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795,
London, 2006, pl. 304. (Fig. 1) One with the similar ‘S’-shaped handles is shown in a photograph
of the interior of the house of the famous Philadelphia art collector Henry C. Gibson, taken c.
1883-1884, which was one of the three cloisonné enamel censers he purchased from the American
Centennial Exhibition in 1876, illustrated in Cloisonné: Chinese Enamels from the Yuan, Ming, and
Qing Dynasties, New York, 2011, p. 204, fg. 10.21. Another decorated with scrolling lotus, the
handles and fnial made of gilt-metal in the form of dragons, from the T.B. Kitson Collections, was
sold at Sotheby’s London, 18 October 1960, lot 113. A similar example with dragon handles, but
decorated with birds and aquatic plants, was sold at Sotheby’s New York, 19 March 1997, lot 155.

清乾隆 掐絲琺瑯「鹿鶴同春」朝冠耳三鶴蓋爐

Fig. 1. A cloisonné enamel incense burner (one of a pair), Qianlong
period, after China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795, London, 2006,

118 pl. 304. ©The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.