A SUPERBLY CARVED AND RARE SPINACH-GREEN JADE BRUSHPOT QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG PERIOD

of cylindrical form, superbly carved in relief with a continuous mountain landscape scene, depicting a scholar on a rocky outcrop pointing at a crane flying high in the distance, with his attendant standing closeby and watching him intently, with a terraced pavilion partially tucked behind a rocky slope across a wide wooded valley filled with lush trees including pine, pawlownia, willow and prunus, beyond a gently splashing waterfall from which two cranes feed, with another scholar standing nearby with an attendant under a rocky outcrop, and swirling clouds above, the underside similarly carved with jagged rockwork, the stone of a deep spinach-green mottled tone with apple-green inclusions, later carved and pierced silver gilt-silver base, cover and dragon mounts

From the Collection of Lord Wardington.   

 

This brushpot is remarkable for its deep, partly undercut relief carving. 

Two spinach-green jade brushpots of similar design and style from the Qing imperial collection are preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing, one inscribed by the Qianlong emperor in the last year of his reign; both are illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Jadeware, Hong Kong, 1995, vol. III, pls. 169 and 170, together with another similar piece of Qianlong mark and period, but smaller size, pl. 168. 

See another similar brushpot in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illutrated in The Refined Taste of The Emperor: Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch’ing Court, No. 58, pps. 178-179.