Immortal Dance

Suzhou, Zhiting school, 1740–1850
Height: 5.38 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.40/1.63 cm
Stopper: coral, carved with a chi dragon; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Zhirou Zhai Collection
Hugh M. Moss Ltd (1993)
Bloch Collection
Bonham’s, Hong Kong, 25 May 2011, lot 59
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd.

Published:
Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1998, no. 373
JICSBS, 43/2 (Autumn 2011), 44, fig. 8
CANS yishu xinwen,171 (April 2012), 163, bottom row, second from right

Chalcedony; adequately but not extensively hollowed, with a concave lip and irregular, flat foot; carved with a continuous, partially cameo scene of Liu Hai, holding a besom in his right hand, a double gourd suspended from his belt, crouching on a rocky outcrop on which he has placed a coin to tempt his three-legged toad from a pool in a rocky landscape, with a clump of lingzhi at his feet and another, single fungus growing from a ledge near his left hand, a crane flying out of a band of formalized clouds around the shoulders of the bottle, towards a mature pine tree, inscribed in relief draft script with what may read, Cai zhi xiang leng wu chanxian 採芝香冷舞蟾仙 (‘Picking fungus, the fragrance grows cold, causing the Toad Immortal to dance’).