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Lot Essay
Previously sold in our New York Rooms, 21 September 1995, lot 231.
The shape of this censer is inspired from examples made in bronze, popular during the Ming and early Qing dynasties. One of the most difficult of glazes to fire, the peachbloom glaze is more often found applied to vessels for the scholar's desk, such as the rare set of eight peachbloom-glazed vessels from the Jingguantang Collection, sold in these Rooms, 3 November 1996, lot 557. Although the present vessel did not belong to these sets of prized scholar's objects, it may have been a precious addition to grace a scholar's table as the burning of incense was a common practice, and was thought to have facilitated the clarity of the mind.
No other peachbloom-glazed censers appear to have been published, although a censer of this form covered on the exterior with a crackled pinkish-red glaze with lion-mask handles left in the biscuit and dressed with a brown slip, is in the Eumorfopolous Collection, illustrated by R. L. Hobson in The George Eumorfopolous Collection Catalogue of Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain, vol. V, London, 1927, pl. 42, no. E260.
The shape of this censer is inspired from examples made in bronze, popular during the Ming and early Qing dynasties. One of the most difficult of glazes to fire, the peachbloom glaze is more often found applied to vessels for the scholar's desk, such as the rare set of eight peachbloom-glazed vessels from the Jingguantang Collection, sold in these Rooms, 3 November 1996, lot 557. Although the present vessel did not belong to these sets of prized scholar's objects, it may have been a precious addition to grace a scholar's table as the burning of incense was a common practice, and was thought to have facilitated the clarity of the mind.
No other peachbloom-glazed censers appear to have been published, although a censer of this form covered on the exterior with a crackled pinkish-red glaze with lion-mask handles left in the biscuit and dressed with a brown slip, is in the Eumorfopolous Collection, illustrated by R. L. Hobson in The George Eumorfopolous Collection Catalogue of Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain, vol. V, London, 1927, pl. 42, no. E260.