A LARGE CLOISONNE ENAMEL INCENSE BURNER QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG PERIOD

of rectangular section, supported by four elaborate gilt-bronze elephant head feet, their details finely cast, the sides decorated on the exterior in cloisonn?enamels with large red and smaller blue and purple fish and black crabs swimming amid light and dark green pondweed against a turquoise ground, framed at the edges by a gilt-bronze keyfret border, applied at each end with a qilong clambering along the rim, their long scaly bodies curled in an upside-down ‘U?shape forming the handles, separate metal liner

This censer represents the high level of artistic and technical achievement of the imperial enamel craftsmen of the Qianlong reign.  Every aspect of the design and execution has been accomplished to the highest standard.  The elephant-head feet are boldly cast with elaborate jewelled garlands, and the fish are impressively rendered with distinct facial features, scaly bodies and different coloured bodies.  Fish have always been a popular decorative motif, as they convey a range of auspicious messages.  The Chinese term for fish is a homophone of yu, which means abundance or surplus.  Thus multiple fish correspond to multiplied abundance and goldfish, jinyu, suggest an abundance of gold. 

See two related basins which are decorated in the same style with fish on the interior, and deer on the exterior, in the Pierre Uldry Collection and the Avery Brundage Collection, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated in Helmut Brinker and Albert Lutz, Chinesisches Cloisonn? Die Sammlung Pierre Uldry, Zurich, 1985, pl. 322 (the Uldry basin) and fig. 72 (the Brundage basin).  Compare also a later example of a vase similarly decorated with fish, pl. 338.