Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

A CHINESE CLOISONNE ENAMEL AND GILT-BRONZE TRIPOD INCENSE BURNER
QIANLONG OR LATER

The vessel with rounded sides decorated with formal scrolling lotus, rising to a flared rim applied with a gilt-bronze key fret band, the sides with two gilt-bronze elephant-head handles and all raised on three gilt-bronze elephant-head feet, the animals adorned with elaborate beaded bridles centred with flowers, together with a removable metal liner, 35cm. (2)

Provenance: formerly from an English private collection, Sussex, acquired in the 1990s.

Cloisonné enamel tripod incense burners of this type originally featured as part of altar sets in Buddhist temples and palaces. A five-piece garniture is illustrated in situ in the Qianqing Gong (Mansion of Heavenly Purity) in Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson, Splendours of China's Forbidden City, fig.32. The form is of archaistic taste, taken from ding vessels of the Shang and Zhou periods, with the original tripod legs and loop handles substituted for gilt-bronze animal heads. The use of elephants in the piece offered here is rare and relates it to another Qianlong example included in the exhibition Tributes from Guangdong to the Qing Court, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, no.34, which additionally featured a cover with a further recumbent elephant supporting a vase. This iconographic element is a pun for the word 'peace' and clarifies the auspicious connotation of elephantine features as seen in the present lot. Compare also with a similar Qianlong example sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 8 October 2007, lot 1308.

清乾隆或更晚 銅胎掐絲琺瑯纏枝蓮紋三足爐
來源：英國薩塞克斯郡私人收藏，購於1990年代。