“The Palace Museum”
OMuRAA Museums Visit! Online Museum Resources on Asian Art
 |
Champleve’ Incense Burner with Lotus Motifs in
Serindian Style
Hello and welcome to my blog! I am your host, CT, and we
will be going on an adventure to visit Online Museum Resources on Asian Art, The
Palace Museum! Let’s get to it!
When I opened and saw some of the many virtual museums, I
decided to visit virtually The Palace Museum which is located in the heart of
Beijing.
On The Palace Museum website, in the "VISIT"
section, stated that the museum is temporarily closed. But here it has also
another information about the museum operation hours, how to buy tickets, the
location of the museum, facilities that can be found while in the museum such
as places to eat and drink, shops, audio guides, information points, ATMs,
lavatories, luggage, accessibility, loan of equipment, first aid, paging
service - lost and found, and tickets. Information about regulations and suggestions
while in the museum can also be found here. There is also has information about
various options for using tour services.
On The Palace Museum's website, I can virtually access
EXHIBITIONS, COLLECTIONS, MULTIMEDIA, EXPLORE, and other things ABOUT The
Palace Museum. I started by opening the exhibitions section, where there are
Current, Previous and Travel Exhibitions. After that I opened the Collections
section which contains various types of collections available such as ceramics,
painting, calligraphy, epigraphy, bronzes, seals, enamels, jewelry, sculpture
and many more. Then I visit Multimedia which has virtual tours a panorama of
Rivers and Mountains. In the Explore section, it is found about Artworks,
People, Culture and Timeline of the Ming and Qing Palace Events from 1368
(Hongwu Reign) to 1909 (Xuantong Reign). And finally, in the ABOUT section,
there is information about the organization and information about this museum.
After visiting this website thoroughly, I returned to visit
the collections section because I wanted to see the collections in this museum.
Here, what caught my eye was the Champleve Incense Burner with Lotus Motifs in
Serindian Style. “This large incense burner has a bronze body, a wrinkled neck,
straight ears, and an openwork cap. Its body is in the shape of an
eighteen-ribbed gourd. The shoulders are adorned with a pair of gold-plated
phoenix-twin hilts. This tripod burner is completely decorated in a champleve
lotus pattern in Serindian Style. All decorative patterns are carved onto the
surface of the bronze body before being covered with enamel glaze and polished.
The sculptural niches are filled with enamel in a variety of colors, including
light blue, sapphire blue, green, light green, red, pink, yellow and white.
Although this burner is under a meter, its presence is extraordinary. From
there one can imagine the magnificent champleve items produced by canton
customs for the imperial Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yuanming yuan).”
According to Bonhams Magazine, “Filling temples, palace
halls and courtyards with white smoke and its intoxicating scent, incense has
been at the heart of Chinese Imperial ritual for thousands of years. By the
time the Manchu Qing Dynasty seized power in the mid-17th century, the use of
incense was integral to every part of life…….All of these acts of worship
during the Qing dynasty involved the lighting of incense sticks and coils,
filling the many halls of the Forbidden City with perfumed smoke. And each of
these incense sticks or coils would have sat in incense burners, specially
commissioned by the Emperor, for altars large and small within the Forbidden
City. Some were open, others covered like those Han dynasty Boshan burners.
Some were ceramic, made for the altars of heaven, earth, sun and moon, and
reflecting their symbolic colors. Others were of bronze, either plain or
decorated with elaborate cloisonné enamel, like the incense burner offered by
Bonhams at the Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art sale in November. Each
made its own small contribution to the pervasive wafts of incense that
distinguished the supremely ritualistic Qing dynasty”. (Bonhams)
“Burning incense was a highly fashionable pastime among
scholars and merchants living in the prosperous cities of southeastern China
during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties… Made for sophisticated clientele,
many of the incense burners were modeled after shapes common to contemporary
porcelains”. (Metropolitan)
After visiting this museum virtually, I was thrilled and
amazed to see so many beautiful types and well-preserved ancient relics that I
can enjoy today. I am very happy to be able to learn something new by visiting
this museum.
Beijing Travel Guide - Forbidden City Documentary (Palace Museum) Part 1 "Secrets" HD
Works Cited
“Beijing Travel Guide-Forbidden City Documentary (Palace Museum) Part 1 “Secrets” HD”. YouTube, 13 September 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHypO2ISPas. Accessed 10 May 2022.
“Burning Desire”. Bonhams Magazine, Winter 2016. www.bonhams.com/magazine/22711/#/MR3_main_index_key=sale&m3=3.
Accessed 10 May 2022.
Leidy, Denise P., et al. “Chinese Decorative Arts.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 55, no. 1, 1997, pp. 1–71, https://doi.org/10.2307/3269222. Accessed 10 May 2022.
"The Palace Museum". The Palace Museum Website. Visit|The Palace Museum (dpm.org.cn). Accessed 10 May 2022.
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