Unfettered

Rensong, mid-summer, 1825
Height: 5.96 cm
Mouth: 0.45 and 0.30 cm. (oval)
Stopper: coral

Provenance:
Margaret Polak
Bonham’s, New York, 24 March 2010, lot 193
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd

Published:
JICSBS, 45/2 (Autumn 2013), 5, fig. 3

Exhibited:
Chinese Culture Center, San Francisco, July 2000

 

Coconut shell, made up of three sections (two convex segments for the main sides, and a separate recessed, concave foot segment); carved on one main side with a horse on a grassy ground beside a tree and a plantain growing beside a rocky formation, with distant peaks beyond, and engraved on the other in clerical script with a dedication, Shaoxiong renxiong qingwan 少雄仁兄清玩 (‘For the pure enjoyment of his excellency Shaoxiong’), followed by a couplet  and then the date and signature, Daoguang wunian zhongxia Rensong 道光五年仲夏  仁松 (‘In mid-summer of the fifth year of the Daoguang reign, Rensong’).

The couplet reads

真石經萬載, 輕騎厯八荒

A true stone will last for ten thousand years;

A light cavalryman will pass through the outlands in all eight directions.

Alexander Whittaker