A BRONZE 'DRAGON' TRIPOD INCENSE BURNER QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

sturdily cast with a shallow bombé body rising from three short tapered legs to a slightly everted rim, surmounted by a pair of handles cast as the sinuous bodies of two scaly dragons, the mythical beasts depicted clambering with their left paws resting on the flat rim and the right paws and curled tails on the shoulder of the vessel, flanking a 'flaming pearl' floating above ruyi-shaped cloud swirls, the base centred with an apocryphal six-character Xuande mark within a recessed panel, the patina of a warm variegated copper-brown colour

Collection of Sheldon L. & Barbara R. Breitbart, New York.
Sotheby's New York, 19th March 1997, lot 27.

Philip K. Hu, Later Chinese Bronzes - The Saint Louis Art Museum and Robert Kresko Collections, St. Louis, 2008, cat. no. 23.