Amongst all archaistic bronze vessels, incense burners of this type, skilfully inlaid in gold and silver, take pride of place. The present example combines a powerful form derived from ritual bronzes of the late Shang dynasty with intricate inlaid taotie decoration.
The dating of this group of bronzes is still somewhat unclear. Although the strong shape suggests the Ming period, the finesse of the inlay hints at the precision of the early Qing. For a gold and silver inlaid vessel of you form in the British Museum attributed to the 18th century, see The British Museum Book of Chinese Art, London, 1992, fig. 48. See also the closely gold and silver inlaid taotie mask decoration on a circular incense burner in the Clague collection, illustrated in China's Renaissance in Bronze. The Robert H. Clague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, 1994, cat. no. 16.
Referring to the importance of reverence to the past in Chinese art, Ulrich Hausmann writes:
"Archaic bronzes and their inscriptions, the subject of centuries of epigraphic and stylistic studies by literary men and artists, became inseparable, so much so that since that time scholars writing characters have seen at the back of their minds the image of ancient bronze vessels whose rubbings they had carefully studied. Generations of painters and calligraphers [...] spent a lifetime studying these inscriptions. What could be more fitting than to embellish one's studio with subtle allusions to the magnificent past, or to furnish the ancestral altar with vessels expressing the continuation of their inheritance." (Quote from Ulrich Hausmann, Later Chinese Bronzes: In Search of Later Bronzes in Documentary Chinese Works of Art: In Scholars' Taste, Ed. Paul Moss, Sydney L. Moss, London, 1983, p.233, requoted again by Hugh Moss and Gerard Tsang in Arts from the Scholar's Studio, The Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong and the Fung Ping Shan Museum, University of Hong Kong, 1986, cat. no. 161.
