A RARE IMPERIAL DATED VARIEGATED RED AND BUFF SHOUSHAN SOAPSTONE RECTANGULAR SEAL

DATED TO THE MIDDLE SPRING MONTH OF THE RENSHEN YEAR, CORRESPONDING TO 1752, AND OF THE PERIOD

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A RARE IMPERIAL DATED VARIEGATED RED AND BUFF SHOUSHAN SOAPSTONE RECTANGULAR SEAL
DATED TO THE MIDDLE SPRING MONTH OF THE RENSHEN YEAR, CORRESPONDING TO 1752, AND OF THE PERIOD
The top finely carved in high relief openwork with an interwoven design of a dragon-headed archaistic belthook, an oval archaistic ring and another horned dragon with scrolling foliate body, one long side carved with a fifteen-character inscription, Renshen chunzhong Shaoling Ju Juanci Huagetang zhencang ('A verse from Shaoling carved in mid-Spring of the renshen year for the Huagetang collection'), the base carved in seal characters, shui liu xin bu jing yun zai yi ju chi ('As the water flows turbulently along the river, my heart remains tranquil; it moves as slowly as the floating clouds')
3 7/8 in. (9.8 cm.) long

展覽

Oriental Works of Art, Gerard Hawthorn Ltd., London, 8 - 26 June 1999, no. 100.

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拍品專文

Huagetang was the hall name used by the twenty-first son of the Kangxi emperor, Yun Xi, Prince Shen (1711-1758). The date renshen year in the inscription would, therefore, correspond to 1752. Shaoling was the style name of the famous Tang dynasty poet Du Fu, and the seal on the base is a couplet from his poem Jiang ting shi, 'The River Pavilion Poem', which recalls his pensive brooding by the waterside.

A soapstone seal also carved on top with similar entwined horned chilong, dated to the Qing dynasty, in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in 50 Selected Gems of Cultural Relics, Beijing, 1999, no. 141. Another small (8.6 cm. long) shoushan rectangular seal in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, which also has dragons carved in a manner similar to those on the present seal, once belonged to the Yongzheng emperor, and was included in the exhibition, Harmony and Integrity: The Yongzheng Emperor and His Times, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2009, p. 77, I-39.