QIANLONG INSCRIBED FOUR-CHARACTER SEAL MARK AND OF THE PERIOD (1736-1795)

This ingenious and very rare vessel combines the functions of a brush pot and a water pot while incorporating strong archaistic features. The essential form places a tall asymmetrical cylinder beside a shallow, irregularly lobed vessel, while the two are held, and almost encircled, by archaistic scrolls suggesting the body, limbs and wings of a dragon. The head of the dragon appears at one side.

While archaistic scrolls of this type can be seen in many different artistic media in the 18th century, including jade, porcelain and textiles, this complex reticulated form, which seems almost to clasp the bronze vessel, is very rare. While the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors were collectors of antiques and the imitation of ancient objects was a feature of a proportion of the decorative arts produced in their reign periods, the fascination with fanggu (imitating the ancient) reached its peak during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. The archaistic decoration of bronzes in the 18th century would have been inspired by catalogues of ancient vessels in the collections of admired emperors of earlier times. On the one hand, bronzes in the imperial collection during the Xuanhe reign (AD 1119-23) of the Northern Song Emperor Huizong were published with woodblock illustrations in the Xuanhe bogu tulu. On the other hand, the bronzes produced during the Xuande reign (1426-35) of the Ming dynasty were greatly admired, and a publication known as the Xuande yiqi tupu claimed to be an illustrated catalogue of Xuande ritual vessels. It is likely that this particular publication is in fact a 17th century work, but nevertheless it does illustrate recognized Xuande types, and would have been a source of inspiration in the 18th century.
Amongst the vessels illustrated in this latter publication are those decorated with gold splashes as illusatrated by Rose Kerr, Later Chinese Bronzes, London, 1990, p. 18, pl. 6. Thus it is probable that while the form of the reticulated decoration on the current vessel took its inspiration from the late Bronze Age, it was from vessels of the Ming dynasty Xuande reign that the inspiration for the 'gold splash' decoration on the current vessel was derived. These gold splashes would have been put on using a technique known as 'fire-gilding'. This technique required that an amalgam of gold and mercury was applied to the surface of the bronze, which was then heated. The heat drove off the mercury as vapor, leaving a thin gold layer on the bronze surface. This was a very dangerous technique, which undoubtedly adversely affected the health of those practicing it, since mercury vapor is highly toxic and would have been inhaled by the bronze craftsmen.