Lot Essay
Sold in these Rooms, 25 April 1966, lot 157
It is rare to find spinach jade of 18th Century date carved into specifically metal shapes; more often, the forms adopt shapes but interpret them to suit the medium, as with brush-pots where the ability to carve patterns in high relief makes the designs far more powerful and crisp than they would be on the bamboo or rootwood prototypes. In this case, the ding closely recreates what was probably itself a Song Dynasty or later antiquarian revival of the Bronze Age original. Another three-legged ding, even more unusually carved from a remarkable yellow-brown nephrite block, is illustrated by R. Keverne, Jade, fig.8, p.201; and also a tripod censer carved from a similar fine spinach-green nephrite, ibid., fig.91, p.164, where the author describes it as a 'classic example of spinach jade at its best'.
It is rare to find spinach jade of 18th Century date carved into specifically metal shapes; more often, the forms adopt shapes but interpret them to suit the medium, as with brush-pots where the ability to carve patterns in high relief makes the designs far more powerful and crisp than they would be on the bamboo or rootwood prototypes. In this case, the ding closely recreates what was probably itself a Song Dynasty or later antiquarian revival of the Bronze Age original. Another three-legged ding, even more unusually carved from a remarkable yellow-brown nephrite block, is illustrated by R. Keverne, Jade, fig.8, p.201; and also a tripod censer carved from a similar fine spinach-green nephrite, ibid., fig.91, p.164, where the author describes it as a 'classic example of spinach jade at its best'.