Description
Description: Chinese porcelain hat stand, with the same rare decoration of the ceramic snuff bottle C3. Here the same description of the motif made for that snuff bottle: hat stand decorated with 18 deer, one monkey and a spider. This is a very rare motif. There is a well-known common motif represented by the puns of “deer” (lu) for “official salary” (lu), wasp (feng) for “confer” (feng), and “monkey” (hou) for “high-ranking noble” (hou), together meaning “May you receive high rank and emoluments”. (For this motif, see bottle C23). But here we have a spider instead of wasps. It has been not easy to find the meaning of this motif, because as said it is quite rare. In fact, in many years I have only found this motif four times, two of which are in my collection, represented by this bottle and a hat stand. The motif is most interesting: in “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, there was a story called 十八路诸侯讨董卓 about 18 local war lords made a pact to fight the evil prime minister Dongzhuo and the motif came from that. We have 十八 (eighteen)路 (deer) 诸 (spider) and 侯 (monkey). This is Chinese symbolism using homophones to the extreme.
Dating: Guangxu period.
Size: 28.5 cm high
Provenance: Antiquarian market.
References:
Notes: In feudal China, there are five ranks of nobility and Hou is the 2nd rank (similar to Marquess in England, below a Duke, but above an Earl). In normal circumstance, Hou is the highest rank a common man can reach through civil or military service and therefore becoming Hou is the ultimate goal of a Chinese officer or official who is not born into the nobility. Hou sounds the same as monkey in Chinese (and written similarly too), therefore it was a tradition to symbolize success in carrier using monkeys in decoration.
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