ESOTERIC COLLECTING

Fig. 13. Jet bottle-signature side. This little beauty (fig. 10) is typi– cal of the literati style of the second half of the Qing dynasty, with a finely incised picture and long in– scription applied by a practiced artist, calligrapher and seal-carver, to a lacquered wood bottle. Until identifying the artist in– volved, it did not appear to be a spectacular bottle, although in fact it is exu'emely finely incised (fig. 11). The form is not particu– larly elegant and the color some– what uninspiring, perhaps, and it escaped closer attention when cata– logued at a minor counuy auction ignominiously lotted up with sev– eral other bottles with an estimate that wouldn't buy you a decent din– ner in New York. It is dated to 1891, Witll ti,e cycli– cal date made unambiguous by the addition of me reign-title of ti,e Guangxu emperor. The long and literate poem is signed Xifeng shan– ren ('The Hermit of the Western Peak'), a hao, or assumed altistic name (fig. 12). By looking up this sobriquet under the index of as– sumed, fanciful names in one of the above-mentioned works, it was possible to identify this alt name with the scholar and alust Yu Guoding, from Ruian. Suddenly an apparently unimpoltant little bottle of scant merit becomes an impor– tant document, dated and signed by a known Iiteratus. It adds to the body of our knowledge of these Qing snuff-taking scholars who made meir own bottles and treated the softer range of materials as al– ternatives to paper as a vehicle for their anistic expression. One of the softer materials fa– vored by the literati for their iron~ brush works was jet and there is a small series of borrles, mostly from the nineteenth centUlY, by known scholar-artists (fig. 13). The surface of jet is soft and, for all practical purposes, without grain so it is an ideal surface for iron-brushwork. Nearly all the known Iiterati jet bot– tles have among the finest iron– brushwork in the entire medium. It is an ideal surface, for instance, on which to have a flowing line which is thin in parts and thickens as the iron point digs deeper, the line curving and recurving as it is mod– ulated, allowing the same sort of expressiveness one expects of cal– ligraphy or painting with a real bmsh. . This picture of Wang Xizl1i; ti,e famous fourth centUlY calligrapher (fig. 14), epitomizes tllis salt of work and is similar in style to that of a group of mid- to late– nineteenth centlllY painters who worked in the Jiangnan area and palticularly in Shanghai. The signa– ture is Ziyu. Ziyu was the zi of Lu Xiang, from Shunde in Guangdong province. He was famous for copy– ing old paintings from an early age, and one of his specialties was copying prunus paintings. There is one other scholar listed as having the same adopted personal name, but both his period and specialties would tend to rule him out, while the coincidence of iu Xiang being noted as a prunus painter is irre– sistible since the other side of this bottle is decorated with a superb painting of prunus. It may not be entirely conclusive, but it is irre– sistible. His dates are not given but he is noted as having been friends with and done joint works with other scholars, whose dates can be established, suggesting that he worked during the first third of the nineteenth cenuuy. We are fortunate here in having a convincing identification, but this is often not the case. AJmough occa– sionally some corroborative evi– dence proves the identification be– yond a doubt, usually there is some element of doubt. The same as- 12 Fig. 14. Close up of W'ang side with chalk. sumed names were sometimes adopted by several scholars over the centuries and sometimes there are many individuals identified with the same name. One can narrow ti,e possibilities down, of course, by ruling out any pre-Qing candi– dates, and if me bottle is datable and the dates are known of the re– maining candidates, one or more may prove the most likely, but mat is as far as it can be taken without some corroborative evidence. This may consist of an inscription to an– other Iiteratus who can be traced and proves to be one of the anist's circle of friends, or his place of bilth, or often another of his names, either signed or in a seal which would confirm his identity beyond reasonable doubt. It is ex– u'emely rare for artists to share both a real name and an art name, or in– deed, two art names. Even witll only one candidate listed, without such corroborative evidence there muSt always be a shadow of doubt since the fact that only one person who used the name Ziyu is listed does nor necessarily mean that no one else ever used it. Others may simply be unlisted for whatever reason. The dictionaries themselves are not either entirely comprehen– sive or one hundred percent reli– able, as we shall see in a moment. Here, of course, a nlIther layer of meaning is added by identifying the