A rare bronze Buddhist long-handled censer China, Tang Dynasty

the cup of the censer with concave walls flaring out sharply to a lipped rim from the flared flat base supported by a short stem before the a wide foliate pedestal foot, the interior set with a high conical stud and a teardrop stud, bearing up the separate warming tray of conforming flared shape set with a small seated lion grasping a ring in its mouth, the long channelled handle curling in conforming shape with the cup below an onion-shaped flange pierced with a cloud-form beside two further studs at the join, and terminating with a finely cast lion seated upon a lotus base

Bo Gyllensvärd describes in 'Tang Gold and Silver', Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 29 , London, 1957, pp. 88-89, incense burners with a long handle linked to a 'stemcup' as one of the Tang innovation shapes. See a bronze incense burner of this type illustrated in Sui T?no bijutsu, Tokyo, 1978, pl.194, together with a gilt-bronze example in the Hakutsuru Art Museum, Kobe, pl. 195; another in the British Museum was included in the Museum's exhibition Buddhism: Art and Faith, London, 1985, cat.no.293, together with a Tang painting from the Dunhuang Caves, depicting the 'Guide of Souls' bodhisattva holding an incense burner of this form, which is emitting smoke, cat.no.316. Another very similar one in the Poly Art Museum, Beijing is illustrated in Selected Bronzes in the Collection of the Poly Art Museum, vol. 1, 1999, pp. 341-342. 

Lions were symbolic as the fierce protectors of the Dharma Law, and also connoted Buddha Sakyamuni as "the Lion of the Sakya Clan". Note a related seated lion component of the Tang gilt bronze votive altar set in this sale, lot 12, in which the component figure of Ananda holds a long-handled censer. Such censers are also held by the fourteenth century donors dressed in the fashion of Mongol nobility embroidered on the mandala of Cakrasamvara, lot 35.