Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 10. (Budapest, 1967)
HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM - MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Horváth, Tibor: A Carved Lacquer Ting with the Mark of Hsüan-te
rare among the forms of the carved lacquers, that we could not as yet, find any similar one. This ting w T as made after a bronze ting. We find such adaptations occasionally among the porcelains of the 14-15 th centuries 2 . The ting is a very characteristic Chinese vessel which history remounts to the neolithic age. In the Shang and Chou periods, it was one of the most commonly used vessels, having a long uninterrupted history up to our times. Tins survival was faciliated by the adaptations of the ting as an incense burner. Approaching the time when our lacquer piece was made,in the period of theSung and Yuan dynasties, incense burners of ting form were made in greater number in Lung-chüan yao. The fact that such incense burners were not reaching the Middle East (there are not any of them in the Topkapu Serai's collection) is not surprising at all, there was no demand there for it. But the form of this lacquer ting was directly taken from a group of very characteristic bronze ting first evolved in the second half of the Shang period, in the 13 th-12 th century B.C., to reach without much alterations, the 10 th century, in the early Chou-time. William Watson characterized this group as follows: "Some rare late Shang tripods have legs in the form of flat bars representing dragons, birds and even human beings in profile" 3 . Such a piece from the A. P. Pillsbury collection now r in the Minneapolis Museum of Art was described by Bernard Karlgren as: "Three figures (representing some kind of demons?, in the same supporting position as the birds or dragons. . . Yin or Early Chou". 4 Such an antiquarian form is the most unusual among lacquer wares. For this eason, it is reasonable to suppose that it was specially ordered to be exhirted in a studio of the Imperial Palace, or of an artist or scholar. We know thatbiollecting or studying antiquities was not only a fashion for which the Im pcrial Court was the model, it was more than that, an important part of the ecultured way of living. Ifit was so, most probably in the 8 th century, the publishing of the first catalogue of bronze vessels from the Shang to the Han dynasty, the K'ao ku t'u (Pictures Studying Antiquities) by Lü Ta-lin in 1092 5 gave a new impetus. This vogue influenced the production of the artisans considerably in the Northern-Sung period, not only the demand for genuine antiquities was so great that the customers were also satisfied with close imitations, but in bronzes, the fashion of the old was prevailing. We know that the Southern Sung Court in Hangchow was favouring new art tendencies and in the Yiiang period, new materials and techniques (porcelain, carved lacquer) necessitated a new approach of decorations. Even in the early part of the Ming period, in the 14 th and 15 th centuries, we can follow the same creative tendency for creating adequate forms and proper and advanced decoration of art objects. The new technique of the cloisonné enamels is especially interest2 Chen Wan-li, The Selected Porcelains from the Collection of the Palace Museum, Peking, 1962. pi. 40: "Blue and white incense burner decorated with Pines, Bamboo and Prunus Tree, Yuan, height: 31.4 cm. (with handles)". (This piece could well be the replica of a contemporary bronze incense burner.) 3 William Watson, Ancient Chinese Bronzes, Faber and Faber, London, 1962. p. 26. 4 A Catalogue of the Chinese Bronzes in the F. A. Pillsbury Collection, Minneapolis, 1952. pis. 9-10. p. 27. 5 William Watson, op. cit. p. 16. — Robert Poor, Notes on the Sung Dynasty Archaeological Catalogues. Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, XIX/1965. pp. 33-44.
