.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The current censer displays remarkable workmanship combining several complex decorative techniques, including inlay of silver wires, chasing of the wavy ground and hammering of gilt decorations on the main band. The engraved seal mark, Yunjian Hu Wenming zhi, may be translated, ‘made by Hu Wenming of Yunjian (modern Songjiang, near Shanghai)’. Hu Wenming was a celebrated metalworker who was active during the late 16th to early 17th century. The same mark can be found on a slightly smaller censer with similar decoration in the main band and with similar handles, in the Palace Museum Collection and listed as a ‘national first-grade cultural relic’, illustrated in Illustrated Important Chinese Cultural Relics Ranking Standard- Bronze, Beijing, 2006, pl. 143 (fig. 1).
For other related censers with the same primary decoration and mark, but with variations to the decorative bands, see one illustrated in The Literati Mode, Sydney L. Moss, Ltd., London, 1986, pp. 291-2, no. 145; one illustrated in Sotheby’s Hong Kong Twenty Years, Hong Kong, 1993, no. 402; and one sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1 June 2011, lot 3946.
Compare also with a group of metalwork examples all bearing the Hu Wenming mark, included in the exhibition Arts from the Scholar’s Studio, Hong Kong, 1986, nos. 73, 103, 230, 231, 237, and 246.
For other related censers with the same primary decoration and mark, but with variations to the decorative bands, see one illustrated in The Literati Mode, Sydney L. Moss, Ltd., London, 1986, pp. 291-2, no. 145; one illustrated in Sotheby’s Hong Kong Twenty Years, Hong Kong, 1993, no. 402; and one sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1 June 2011, lot 3946.
Compare also with a group of metalwork examples all bearing the Hu Wenming mark, included in the exhibition Arts from the Scholar’s Studio, Hong Kong, 1986, nos. 73, 103, 230, 231, 237, and 246.