Provenance: Christie's London, 23rd April 1990, lot 55.
Collection of Alan and Simone Hartman.
Christie's Hong Kong, 27th November 2007, lot 1547..

Literature: Robert Kleiner, Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 77.

Notes: This finely carved ‘champion’ vase encapsulates the Qianlong Emperor’s reverence for the past, as it derives from archaic bronze vessels produced from as early as the Western Han dynasty (206 BC - AD 9). These prototypes were cast in the form of two cups joined by an eagle (ying) standing on a bear (xiong); see one excavated in Mancheng, Hebei province, illustrated in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jades. From the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, p. 387, fig. 4. ‘Champion’ vases regained popularity in the Song dynasty (960-1279), and by the Qianlong reign (1735-96) became an important part of marriage rituals, with the two compartments of the vase symbolising the union between bride and groom.

A slightly larger vase of this type, in the De An Tang Collection, was included in the exhibition A Romance with Jade, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2004, cat. no. 131; another was exhibited in Jade as Sculpture, Minnesota Museum of Art, Saint Paul, 1975, cat. no. 64; a third, with a Qianlong mark and of the period, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Compendium of Collections in the Palace Museum. Jade, Qing Dynasty, vol. 10, Beijing, 2011, pl. 149; and a further example, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is published in S. Howard Hansford, Chinese Carved Jades, London, 1968, pl. 94. See also a vase sold in our London rooms, 20th November 1973, lot 71; and another sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1st November 2004, lot 834, and again in these rooms, 7th April 2015, lot 3105.

‘Champion’ vases were made in a variety of media; for example see a bronze vase attributed to the Song dynasty, illustrated in Paul Moss and Gerard Hawthorn, The Second Bronze Age. Later Chinese Metalwork, Sydney Moss Ltd., London, 1991, cat. no. 35; and a cloisonné enamel example from the Clague Collection, included in the exhibition Chinese Cloisonné, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, 1980, cat. no. 39.