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2. VERY RARE “KNEELING ATTENDANT”
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From the Collection of Anthony and Susan Hardy Exhibition: The Glorious Tradition of Chinese Bronzes, Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore, 2000, published by Li Xueqin, exhibition catalogue no. 58. The figure is dressed in livery and a hat of the period cast in kneeling posture with the torso in erect posture. The arms form a circle before the chest with the clasped hands forming a socket for insertion. Poised at a ninety degree angle from the post, the dish of the lamp is fitted with a pricket at the centre. The metal is of a reddish-brown colour with areas of green oxidation around the hat and the top of the lamp. The garments show traces of geometric motifs painted in lacquer and pigment, with some visible motifs and elements still remaining. This bronze belongs to a group of lamps made first in the Warring States period and into the Han Dynasty (206 BC- 220 AD) which ingeniously incorporate animal as well as human subjects into the decorative support scheme for lamps. Most, however, are made in plain bronze with incised decoration. Lacquer painted examples are rare; another similarly-painted example with a kneeling figure in the same physical posture excavated in Henan Province in 1975 is published in Zhongguo Wenwu Jinghua Da Cidian, Bronze Edition, no. 1004..The figure kneels on a plinth and the lamp rests on a two-pronged forked post. The current example has a pricket on this dish suggesting that some solid rather than liquid form of fuel was used at this time. Two other unusual figures are included in the same publication, ibid., no. 1003 - a sturdy man standing atop a prone beast on an encircled base excavated in Shandong in 1957 now in the Historical Museum of China. Both are fitted with lamps swiveling outwards. The other, no. 1008, excavated in Hebei Province in 1966 portrays an equestrian figure holding the lamp on an erect post. |
