PROVENANCE:
Commandant Paul-Louis Weiller (1893-1993), and thence by descent to the present owner.
Christie's Hong Kong, 30 November 2011, Lot 2963

This lot is carved into the archaistic form of a Gong from Shang-Zhou dynasties, worked in the form of a flattened tapering vessel with a softly undulating rim, one side decorated with a chilong clambering vertically to the top with one paw resting on the rim and the mouth opening up, both rounded edges decorated in low relief with stylised lingzhi and shaped scrolls, all against a textured ground of 'commaswirls', the stone of a uniform white colour. The vessel perfectly reincarnates the aesthetics of Shang-Zhou bronze wares onto the material of jade with the distinctive grand and splendid style. The inscription on this vessel includes a poem and six characters Qianlong yiji yuti , which can be translated as 'inscribed by His majesty Qianlong in the yiji year' (corresponding to 1785). The poetic inscription praises this rhyton made of Hetian jade.