Lot Essay
The Eight Buddhist Emblems and a brief suggestion of their meaning are as follow:
The Wheel of Law, falun, 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, shuangyu, conjugal happiness, fertility, protection, spiritual liberation; the Endless Knot, zhang, eternity.
This set of eight Emblems would have been placed on an altar as ornaments. 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. One such 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, Catalogue no. 78. Another set can be seen on the altar of the Fanzonglou in the Forbidden City, Beijing, 1992, pl. 99-1, where metal altar ornaments , on which the porcelain ones are based, are pictured on another altar, pl. 108-1 and 3, while a gilt-silver set is seen on pl. 139. Three other complete sets were sold at auction: an identical set sold in these Rooms, The Imperial Sale, 29 April 2002, lot 535; a slightly larger set with iron-red dragons around the base, also sold in these Rooms, 29 November 2005, lot 1619; and another sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 29 October 2001, lot 607.
It is interesting to find a reference on how the emblems were used. An official Court portrait of Emperor Kangxi in his later years, depicts the elderly monarch holding a string of beads, seated behind a low table arranged with a complete set of eight emblems; cf. Court Paintings of the Qing Dynasty of the Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1992, pl. 14.
The Wheel of Law, falun, 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, shuangyu, conjugal happiness, fertility, protection, spiritual liberation; the Endless Knot, zhang, eternity.
This set of eight Emblems would have been placed on an altar as ornaments. 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. One such 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, Catalogue no. 78. Another set can be seen on the altar of the Fanzonglou in the Forbidden City, Beijing, 1992, pl. 99-1, where metal altar ornaments , on which the porcelain ones are based, are pictured on another altar, pl. 108-1 and 3, while a gilt-silver set is seen on pl. 139. Three other complete sets were sold at auction: an identical set sold in these Rooms, The Imperial Sale, 29 April 2002, lot 535; a slightly larger set with iron-red dragons around the base, also sold in these Rooms, 29 November 2005, lot 1619; and another sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 29 October 2001, lot 607.
It is interesting to find a reference on how the emblems were used. An official Court portrait of Emperor Kangxi in his later years, depicts the elderly monarch holding a string of beads, seated behind a low table arranged with a complete set of eight emblems; cf. Court Paintings of the Qing Dynasty of the Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1992, pl. 14.