4. M4596
£13,500
Description
Chinese porcelain blue and white incense burner in the form of a seated Buddhist lion with an openwork ribbon-threaded brocade ball under its front left paw, with upright blue-washed tail, laidback ears and densely speckled body heightened with flames, wearing a bell suspended from a neck collar and with a double gourd on its back bearing da ji, ‘great fortune’ characters, all on a rectangular raised plinth decorated on each panel with a ruyi-head with geometric design of scales and fretwork.
8 7/8 inches, 22.5 cm high.
Wanli/Tianqi, circa 1620.
Provenance & Additional Information
- Sold by Ikeda, Tokyo, 24th November 2017.
- Included by Marchant in their exhibition of Kosometsuke & Shonzui, 2024, no. 4, pp. 22/23.
- The inner base with two ink characters, ‘ren ri’.
- This incense burner would have had a flat lower porcelain base that held the incense in a rectangular liner.
- A similar model without the double gourd on its back, is illustrated by Sir Michael Butler in the exhibition catalogue of Late Ming, Chinese Porcelain from the Butler Collections, Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg, 2008, no. 13, p. 40, and again by Teresa Canepa and Katharine Butler in Leaping the Dragon Gate, inventory no. 1291, p. 112; another was included by Marchant in their exhibition of Chinese Ceramics Tang to Qing, 2014, no. 22, pp. 44/6 with gate fold; another with white ground body also without the double gourd, gift of Dr. Yokogawa Tamisuke, in the Tokyo National Museum, is illustrated in their catalogue of Chinese Ceramics II, no. 448, p. 110, and again illustrated by Masahiko Kawahara in Ko-sometsuke, Monochrome Section, no. 121, p. 33; another example facing in the opposite direction without the double gourd is illustrated by Maria Antónia Pinto de Matos in The RA Collection of Chinese Ceramics Volume One, no. 44, pp. 102/3.
- A related incense holder and stand in the form of a cat holding a mouse under its left front paw, was included by Marchant in their exhibition of Ming Porcelain for the Japanese Market, Ko-sometsuke and Ko-akai, 2008, no. 21, pp. 46/7, gate fold and front cover, where the stand is also illustrated separately.
Condition
- good condition, with ball, chip to head scroll tooth retouched, and natural firing cracks
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