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Lot Essay
The characters fanggu in the mark, may be translated, 'after the antique'. This large vase belongs to a group of equally monumental jade vases inspired by the shape and decoration of ancient bronzes. They are all thick-walled, unusually heavy and carved from opaque jade of dark green or grey-green color. A vase of this type is illustrated by d'Argencé, Chinese Jades in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1977, pp. 118-19, pl. LII, where the author notes that it was the taste and interest of the Emperor Qianlong that was responsible for the wave of archaism seen during the Qianlong period, which influenced not only jade carvers but other artisans during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Brundage vase is of a more pear-shaped form and has a pair of elephant-head handles in place of the four animal masks. As with the Taper vase, the central band of decoration is composed of large taotie masks reserved on a very similar leiwen ground set between similar borders of whorl motifs. Another vase from this group included in the exhibition, Chinese Treasures from the Avery Brundage Collection, Asia Society, New York, 1968, no. 51, is incised with a lengthy inscription bearing a date corresponding to 1789. This dark green hu-shaped vase is also decorated with a broad band of taotie masks reserved on a leiwen ground set between different borders of Ming or Qing inspiration, and rather than animal-mask handles has a pair of lug handles.