Cloisonné Incense Burner
Ming dynasty, 16th century
Height: 27.5cm
Cloisonné and gilt bronze incense burner in the form of a duck, fashioned as a vessel with removable cover, standing on a lozenge-shaped base, itself supported by an open-work stand cast with scrolling ruyi heads. Both halves of the bird have gilt copper liners, the upper one pierced with a cash-shaped opening under the long neck. Another such opening, in gilt bronze, is set below the bird’s tail and together they enable the incense smoke to be drawn up its neck and through its open gilt beak. The duck has a long, curling tongue and engraved nostrils. Its highly stylized eyes are formed of cloisons of white enamel in the shape of elongated tear-drops, with circular blue pupils. The lower part of its body would have held the incense and is supported by two sturdy gilt bronze legs with webbed feet. Gilt bronze bands border the two halves of the bird where they meet. The gilt cloisons suggest the various shapes and patterns of feathers and are set with dark green, dark blue, turquoise, aubergine, red, yellow and white enamels. The cloisonné base is decorated with cloud forms in dark green, red, aubergine, yellow and white, all on a clear turquoise ground, apart from two areas on top, left undecorated in plain gilt bronze where the webbed feet had to be dowelled in. Both mixed and unmixed enamels have been used to achieve the varied palette: the mottled dark green of the duck’s back, for example, is composed of rather large and coarsely mingled dots of green, red, brown and yellow pastes. The stepped gilt bronze stand is engraved all over with exceptionally delicate designs: continuous classic scroll around the upper tier and flowering and fruiting branches of peach, persimmon, pomegranate and finger citron over the bracketed lower tier and feet.
Provenance:
J. Dollfus, Paris.
Acquired from L. Heliot, Paris (5th June 1912).
Adolphe Stoclet, Brussels.
Madame Féron-Stoclet, Brussels.
Published:
Georges A. Salles and Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt, ‘Collection Adolphe Stoclet’, Brussels, 1956, pages 436-439
Similar examples:
‘Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art’, Sotheby’s and Co., London, 1/2/1966, lot 25 for a very similar duck, without its base, from the Jardine collection.
Sir Harry Garner, ‘Chinese and Japanese Cloisonné Enamels’, London, 1962, plate 58a, for a duck, without its base, dated to the first half of the seventeenth century.
Chen Xiasheng, ‘Ming Qing falang gongyi yi’, (Cloisonné Technology of the Ming and Qing Periods, part 1), Gugong wenwu yuekan, (The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art), number 191, Taibei, February 1999, page 4 for a related duck on a circular base.
According to Garner, ‘A number of figures of ducks are known, generally mounted on square or rhomboidal bases, decorated in enamels different from those of the ducks themselves.’1
A famous example of a similarly designed duck-shaped incense burner on a rhomboid base, in porcelain, dating to the late Chenghua period (1465-1487) exists.2 In the case of the porcelain example, incense also would have been placed inside the duck’s body and the ensuing smoke would have moved up its throat and out of the bird’s mouth. Chenghua porcelain was greatly admired and widely copied in the Ming and Qing periods, and it is tempting to suggest, although no proof exists, that the Chenghua porcelain duck might have served as a prototype for the later cloisonné version.
1 Sir Harry Garner, ‘Chinese and Japanese Cloisonné Enamels’, London, 1962, page 83.
2 The Jingdezhen Institute of Ceramic Archaelogy and The Tsui Museum of Art, ‘A Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign excavated from Zhushan, Jingdezhen’, Hong Kong, 1993, page 156, number C34.