Matching Rose Mandarin hand painted dishes

Chinalai Tribal Antiques, Ltd.

Chinese export porcelain from the Qing period, 19th century, these quatrefoil bowls were originally filled with fruit or other delicacies to be placed before home altars as ritual offerings. The identical hand-painted figure on each dish illustrates the same true story of the hero Fu Sheng. When, in an attempt to undermine Confucianism, the first Qin emperor had important books burned, historian Fu Sheng risked his life to hide valuable art and literature within the wall of a temple. (In 212 BCE alone, more than 460 people who violated the book ban were murdered.) The artifacts that survived were retrieved in the beginning of the Han period. Hundreds of years later, during the early Qing period, 40 heroes from the Han to the Song Dynasty were honored in a book by Jin Guliang called Wushuangpu. The 3rd of the 40 was Fu Sheng. Wushuangpu subsequently became a reference book for ceramicists who featured painted portraits of the 40 notables. On each of these two pedestaled dishes, Fu Sheng is pictured with a bundle of rescued books and a poem in classical Chinese which translates as:

The old scholar, over ninety years,

Faced Qin’s fires, hid books in walls.

The emperor’s wisdom and the heavens endure,

Like stone that soars and seas that rise, forever unyielding.

On the road to Jinan, one elder remains.

$1200 each; as a pair: $2300

$2,300.00

Artwork details