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Lot Essay
The Eight Buddhist Emblems, and a brief suggestion of their meaning, are as follows:
the Wheel of Law (fulun), the inexorable expansion of The Buddha's teaching; the Conch Shell (luo), majesty, felicitous journey, the voice of the Buddha; the Umbrella (san), spiritual authority, reverence, purity; the Canopy (gai), royal grace; the Lotus (hua), purity, truthfulness in adversity; the Vase (ping), Eternal harmony, the receptacle for lustral water, the nectar of immortality; the Paired Fish (shangyu), conjugal happiness, fertility, protection, spritual liberation; the Endless Knot (zhang), eternity.
Seven of the eight Emblems have inventory stickers, stamped with an iron-red mark Erxiqi nian fucha, 'On inspection after the 27th year'. It is possible that this is either in reference to the 27th year of Guangxu (1902) or of the Republic of China (1939). A single tag on one, which is probably part of the same inventory, is inscribed with the four-characters Fan hong di yang 'iron-red ground (with) enamels'.
Complete sets of altar ornaments are extremely rare and only a few are known in the Lamaist temples in the precincts of the Forbidden City, Beijing and in the Summer Palace in Chengde. Such a set from the Chengde Imperial Mountain Resort Museum was included in the exhibition Imperial China: The Living Past, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1992, cat. no. 78. Another set sold in Hong Kong, 29 October 2001, lot 607.
A complete set of altar emblems is depicted in an official Court portrait, illustrated in Court Paintings of the Qing Dynasty of the Collection in the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1992, pl. 14; where the emblems are arranged on a low table in front of Emperor Kangxi holding a string of beads.
the Wheel of Law (fulun), the inexorable expansion of The Buddha's teaching; the Conch Shell (luo), majesty, felicitous journey, the voice of the Buddha; the Umbrella (san), spiritual authority, reverence, purity; the Canopy (gai), royal grace; the Lotus (hua), purity, truthfulness in adversity; the Vase (ping), Eternal harmony, the receptacle for lustral water, the nectar of immortality; the Paired Fish (shangyu), conjugal happiness, fertility, protection, spritual liberation; the Endless Knot (zhang), eternity.
Seven of the eight Emblems have inventory stickers, stamped with an iron-red mark Erxiqi nian fucha, 'On inspection after the 27th year'. It is possible that this is either in reference to the 27th year of Guangxu (1902) or of the Republic of China (1939). A single tag on one, which is probably part of the same inventory, is inscribed with the four-characters Fan hong di yang 'iron-red ground (with) enamels'.
Complete sets of altar ornaments are extremely rare and only a few are known in the Lamaist temples in the precincts of the Forbidden City, Beijing and in the Summer Palace in Chengde. Such a set from the Chengde Imperial Mountain Resort Museum was included in the exhibition Imperial China: The Living Past, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1992, cat. no. 78. Another set sold in Hong Kong, 29 October 2001, lot 607.
A complete set of altar emblems is depicted in an official Court portrait, illustrated in Court Paintings of the Qing Dynasty of the Collection in the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1992, pl. 14; where the emblems are arranged on a low table in front of Emperor Kangxi holding a string of beads.