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Celadon
Jade
€375,000
Dating from the Qianlong period, this vase in
celadon jade with veins and russet inclusions
collected €375,000 at its Drouot sale on 19 February
(Renard auction house). A new victory for the stone
that has always been popular in Asia and has a truly
ancient success story; in China it was already the
object of commercial exchanges in the Neolithic
period. Jade is closely associated with power.
A dictionary dating from the end of the Han dynasty,
the ‘Shuowen jiezi by Xu Shen’ (lines 58-147), tells
how at one point, the character ‘yu’, meaning jade,
also meant ‘sovereign’. In fact, the most beautiful
varieties of jade, privileges of the powerful, have
been associated with different rituals since very
ancient times. The great Chinese thinker Confucius
himself assigned correspondences between jade
and fundamental moral virtues in his ‘Book of Rites’.
For example, ‘Its perfect density and its extreme
hardness represent the assurance of intelligence’.
Concerned with legitimising the Qing dynasty’s
Manchu origins to the Chinese population, the Qianlong
Emperor initiated a vast programme to recover
the nation’s history. The formal and archaic decorative
vocabulary of this vase places it within this political
period, and furthermore by its employment of a
material more sought-after than gold. Sylvain Alliod
China, Qianlong period (1735-1796), quadrangular vase
in céladon jade with veins and russet inclusions.
28,5 x 14,5 x 5,5 cm.
AUCTION RESULTS THE MAGAZINE
N° 23 I GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL
67