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RICHARD REDDING ANTIQUES |
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RICHARD REDDING ANTIQUES |
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A magnificent pair of gilt bronze mounted Qianlong Chinese porcelain two-light candelabra, each with a Lion of Fo standing beside a hexagonal shaft headed by a Régence style upright stem cast with leaves and foliage surmounted by a gadrooned finial and issuing two scrolled moulded branches terminating in circular gadrooned drip-pans and vase-shaped nozzles, on a pierced rectangular base within a plinth cast with stylised leaves The Lions of Fo, Chinese, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period (1736-95) The gilt mounts, Paris, date circa 1820-40 (PLEASE CHECK DATE) Height 32 cm, width 25.5 cm. each. Provenance: Bernard Stodel, Amsterdam. Literature: Daniel Alcouffe, Anne Dion-Tenenbaum and Gérard Mabille, “Gilt Bronzes in the Louvre”, 2004, p. 42, illustrating a very similar single candelabrum in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. The fascination for Oriental porcelain held great sway for eighteenth and nineteenth century European society. Of the vast number of imported Chinese objects, many were often further embellished, doubtless to the demands of the Parisian marchands-merciers, with precious ornamental gilt bronze mounts to create an object with an entirely different function. The present pair of candelabra compare very closely with a single candelabrum in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (bequeathed by Monsieur and Madame René Grog-Carven 1973). The latter however has a standing Lion of Fo created in Chinese jasper porcelain (with its distinctive green, yellow and violet spots on a white ground) dating from the second half of the seventeenth century, while the mounts were made in Paris during the early part of the eighteenth century. Of interest the example in the Louvre also includes bronze mounts around the animal’s paws as well as a collar around its neck, possibly to cover some earlier damage to the porcelain. The word ‘Fo’ means Buddha and thus Lions of Fo are also known as Lions of Buddha, as well as Fo Dogs, or Shishi (from the Chinese meaning stone lion); they were intended to act as guardian figures at the entrance to a temple or other holy place as well as a grand residence. Lions and Fo Dogs played a big part in Chinese folklore and as such were usually depicted looking more mythical than real. Pairs of stone lions were also popular as guardians for buildings and temples since according to feng shui they brought ‘good energy’. In those cases one had its right front paw, as here, placed on a ball made of strips of silk and the other, with its front paw on a small lion cub. Sometimes two lions are seen playing with a ball made of strips of silk. As architectural figures Lions of Fo were made from a range of materials but predominantly were carved in marble and stone or cast in bronze. By the eighteenth century they were also being made on a smaller scale out of porcelain, especially to satisfy the insatiable demands of the export market to the West. In turn these were copied by a number of the European factories such as those at the Staffordshire potteries. Because of the influx of such Chinese Fo lions, many are now to be found in Western public collections such as the Frick Collection, New York, which is home to an unmounted nineteenth century porcelain Lion of Fo. The present example dates from the eighteenth century and exemplifies the taste for exotic objects that dominated the Qing court under the Emperor Qianlong (1711-99; ruled 1736 to 1795). |