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Lot Essay
Previously sold in these Rooms, The Imperial Sale, 30 April 2000, lot 564.
An identical censer from the Herbert R. Bishop collection was included in the National Academy of Design loan exhibition in 1893. It was initially sold in the American Art Galleries, 25 January 1906, lot 2305, and sold again in our London Rooms, 15 June 1999, lot 105. It is possible that the Bishop censer was the pair to the present censer.
Both the Bishop censer and the present example are cast with a cylindrical funnel on their backs, in a slight variation to a group of smaller related censers with the funnel modelled as part of the beast's singular horn such as the censer in the National Palace Museum, illustrated in A Special Exhibition of Buddhist Gilt Votive Objects, Taipei, 1995, no. 21; and again in A Special Exhibition of Incense Burners and Perfumers Throughout the Dynasties, Taipei, 1994, no. 119. Also compare to the censer in the British Museum illustrated on the cover of the Catalogue for the Collection of Oriental Antiquities, London, 1989.
Another version of this type of gilt-bronze mythical beast is found cast in two separate parts with the beast's head acting as a cover, cf. a similar example sold in our Paris Rooms, 15 June 2005, lot 219; and a related example inlaid with turquoise carvings in the Shenyang Museum, is illustrated by R. L. Thorpe, Son of Heaven, Imperial Arts in China, Catalogue, Seattle, 1988, no. 33, p. 40.
An identical censer from the Herbert R. Bishop collection was included in the National Academy of Design loan exhibition in 1893. It was initially sold in the American Art Galleries, 25 January 1906, lot 2305, and sold again in our London Rooms, 15 June 1999, lot 105. It is possible that the Bishop censer was the pair to the present censer.
Both the Bishop censer and the present example are cast with a cylindrical funnel on their backs, in a slight variation to a group of smaller related censers with the funnel modelled as part of the beast's singular horn such as the censer in the National Palace Museum, illustrated in A Special Exhibition of Buddhist Gilt Votive Objects, Taipei, 1995, no. 21; and again in A Special Exhibition of Incense Burners and Perfumers Throughout the Dynasties, Taipei, 1994, no. 119. Also compare to the censer in the British Museum illustrated on the cover of the Catalogue for the Collection of Oriental Antiquities, London, 1989.
Another version of this type of gilt-bronze mythical beast is found cast in two separate parts with the beast's head acting as a cover, cf. a similar example sold in our Paris Rooms, 15 June 2005, lot 219; and a related example inlaid with turquoise carvings in the Shenyang Museum, is illustrated by R. L. Thorpe, Son of Heaven, Imperial Arts in China, Catalogue, Seattle, 1988, no. 33, p. 40.