A fine and rare rhinoceros horn stemcup late Ming / early Qing, 16th - 18th Century

the horn progressing from a slightly mottled dark chocolate and honey tone to an outstanding golden russet hue, finely shaped and tapered to walls of superb translucency, the small goblet of flared U-shape, slightly thicker at the rounded bottom of the well but tapering finely to the crisp rim, the horn-hairs forming the stem left unbroken and shaped to a flaring column splayed gently to the circular pad-foot with squared rim, the concave base neatly flaring and probably later incised with an apochryphal Da Ming Tianqi nianzhi mark

Sotheby's New York, 23rd September 1995, lot 298.

Plain regular vessels, such as vases, cups and bowls, which do not take the natural shape of the horn are extremely rare within the range of extant rhinoceros horn carvings. They required the selection and manipulation of very large unblemished horns, and required huge wastage of the precious raw material since they used only the very tip, and none of these surviving plain vessels are of large size. For example, the present stemcup was carved upside down, and the pad foot would therefore be near the tip of the horn. The wastage required to polish away enough material to create the unblemished foot of that diameter is noteworthy. Compare two stemcups of different form, the first with a raised Xuande mark in the collection of Thomas Fok, and the second a stembowl, of classic Ming porcelain form, in the collection of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, illustrated in Thomas Fok, Connoisseurship of Rhinoceros Horn Carvings in China, Hong Kong, 1999, nos. 53 and 61. The latter stembowl in particular appears to have a very similar treatment of the footrim, and is ascribed a 16th century dating. The coloration of the horn itself is also rather distinctive, and fits well within the range of 16th -17th century plain horns, as opposed to the much darker and redder material used in libation cups from the Kangxi to Qianlong periods.

The incised Tianqi reignmark is written in a distinctive kaishu script more reminiscent of Xuande porcelain than of Wanli or 17th century reignmarks. Needless to say, Tianqi-marked imperial wares are almost unknown and it also appears unlikely that a rhinoceros horn of this quality was executed during that short and turbulent reign (1521-1527); it seems more likely that this reignmark was incised  much later as an ambitious attribution.