QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

Incense holders of this form were intended as part of the furnishings in a throne room. Several examples of similar parfumier in cloisonne enamel or entirely in bronze are illustrated in The Forbidden City, Palace Museum, Beijing, 1993: pl. 24 illustrates a parfumier with cloisonne and champleve enamel decoration with a dragon climbing up the column; pl. 52, with a similar pair in situ flanking the imperial throne in the Palace of Heavenly Purity; pl. 85, a smaller cloisonne enamel pair in the main room of the Palace of Concentrated Beauty; and pl. 106 with another large pair of bronze and gilt-bronze parfumiers on either side of the throne in the Hall of Mental Cultivation. Another example is in the collection of the Shenyang Imperial Palace Museum, illustrated in The Enamel Volume, The Prime Cultural Relics Collected by Shenyang Imperial Palace Museum, Shenyang, 2007, p. 86, pl. 1.

Compare also a very similar cloisonne enamel parfumier with a gilt dragon exhibited at the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, The Royal Academy of Art, London 1935-1936, illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 170, pl. 2014; and a pair included in the 1996 exhibition at the Musee du Petit Palais, Paris, La Cite interdite, 1996, and illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 164.

A similar pair was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, The Imperial Sale, 27 April 1997, lot 89; another single one was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 30 October 2001, lot 621. Another pair from the Juan Jose Amezaga and Maria Dolores Feijoo Collection was sold at Christie's Paris, 7 December 2007, lot 24.