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Jade, the Imperial Gem, with Clarissa von Spee
24 Plays2 years ago
Clarissa von Spee, curator and Chair of Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, comes on the pod to discuss a pair of ornately carved Qing Dynasty jade vessels, made by masters in Suzhou, China. Probably luxury objects and perhaps gifts, they’re just a couple of the more than two hundred objects on view as part of the exhibition "China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta," the first exhibition in the West that focuses on the artistic production and cultural impact of a region located in the coastal area south of the Yangzi River.
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Transcript
Introduction to Jade's Historical Significance
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects.
00:00:11
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I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:12
Speaker
Jade.
00:00:13
Speaker
It's called the imperial gem, and in China it's seen as the pinnacle of luxury and refinement.
00:00:19
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It's been used for precious crafts since prehistory, and fine specimens have been assigned greater value than silver or even gold.
00:00:27
Speaker
One of the oldest jade-producing regions in the world is the Yangtze River Delta, the region roughly centered around Shanghai and Nanjing.
00:00:35
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Historically, jade mined and carved in this region was often sent to the imperial court where it graced some of the richest and most powerful rulers the world has ever seen.
00:00:45
Speaker
Today, our curious object is actually twins, two nearly identical intricately carved jade cups both originating in this critical region, and they've just been brought together for the first time in recorded history.
Reuniting Jade Cups from Beijing and Cleveland
00:01:00
Speaker
One belongs to the Beijing Palace Museum, while the other lives 7,000 miles away in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
00:01:07
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How these twins wound up on opposite sides of the world is just one of the stories we're going to explore today.
00:01:13
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We'll also talk about the precious material itself, and how not all jade is created equal, and about how these cups were long thought to be centuries older than they really are, and about the mystical carved figures decorating
Exhibition Overview and Guest Introduction
00:01:26
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them.
00:01:26
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Both pieces are being shown together right now in a brand new exhibition at the Cleveland Museum called China's Southern Paradise, open from now until January 7th, 2024.
00:01:37
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The exhibition includes some 200 fascinating objects from paintings to porcelain to couture spanning thousands of years of history and brought together from around the world.
00:01:47
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And that exhibition's curator and my guest today is Clarissa von Spee, curator of Chinese art and chair of Asian art at the Cleveland Museum.
00:01:55
Speaker
Clarissa, thanks for joining me.
00:01:57
Speaker
Hello, thank you for having me.
00:01:59
Speaker
So before we get started, just a reminder that you can see images of the pieces we're talking about today at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:02:08
Speaker
If you enjoy the show, I'd be really grateful if you leave us a rating and review, which helps more listeners find curious objects.
00:02:15
Speaker
And make sure you're subscribed in your podcast app, whether that's Spotify or Apple Podcasts or something else, so you don't miss future episodes.
00:02:22
Speaker
And if you'd like to get in touch with me with comments or suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you on Instagram at Objective Interest or via email CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
00:02:36
Speaker
And with that said, we're going to try something new today to help introduce us to Clarissa Vonspey with a round of rapid fire questions, game show style.
00:02:46
Speaker
Clarissa, are you ready?
00:02:48
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Yep.
00:02:49
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All right, let's do it.
00:02:50
Speaker
There's an asteroid headed for Earth, and you are on the escape pod, of course.
00:02:56
Speaker
What one object or artwork are you bringing with you?
00:02:59
Speaker
I think I would not take an artwork.
00:03:03
Speaker
I would get a pad, a pencil, and a brush to make sure I can create some artwork, and it's not getting boring for me.
00:03:13
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The creative approach.
00:03:14
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Okay.
00:03:15
Speaker
What's the most valuable object or artwork that you've ever touched?
00:03:20
Speaker
probably a work of art in the Cleveland Museum of Art here in the state of Ohio.
00:03:29
Speaker
It's a rouleware dish from the 12th century and there are twin versions on the market or have been recently sold and one was sold at Susabee's for 37 million dollars.
00:03:45
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a few years ago.
00:03:47
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And ours is just a twin version of it.
00:03:50
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It's a porcelain, very finely glazed with a bluish green glaze.
00:03:56
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And yeah, I handled it.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I would assume it would have a similar value on the market.
00:04:03
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You didn't drop it, did you?
00:04:06
Speaker
No, I did not.
Guest's Archaeological Interests and Discoveries
00:04:07
Speaker
I tried hard not to.
00:04:09
Speaker
Okay, you're now banned from your current field, and you have to pick a new specialty.
00:04:13
Speaker
What's it going to be?
00:04:14
Speaker
That would be learning or being active in the underwater world archaeology.
00:04:23
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That would be my dream.
00:04:25
Speaker
Okay, fascinating.
00:04:28
Speaker
What movie has the most interesting depiction of material culture?
00:04:33
Speaker
well, you will laugh, but maybe for me, it's a Wizard of Oz, which is because it's so rare what the material culture they present and you're exposed to as a viewer.
00:04:46
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But the Tin Man or the basket that, you know, where the dog is carried on the bike, these kind of, well, kind of very spare requisites to tell the story, I find quite fascinating.
00:05:01
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That's fantastic.
00:05:02
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And of course, the Emerald City.
00:05:03
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Yeah.
00:05:04
Speaker
What's your favorite museum to visit?
00:05:07
Speaker
And you can't choose your own, of course.
00:05:09
Speaker
That would be, I guess, the Villa Borghese in Rome.
00:05:16
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Okay.
00:05:16
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And the wonderful, yeah, sculptures there.
00:05:18
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And the garden, the garden and villa, both.
00:05:21
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Of course, of course.
00:05:22
Speaker
What one book should an amateur read to start to understand your field?
00:05:27
Speaker
two fascinating books that give you a big picture.
00:05:30
Speaker
One is Neil MacGregor's book, History of the World in 100 Objects, which is, you know, includes Asian art.
00:05:39
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And the other is specifically Asian art or Chinese art.
00:05:44
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And that is Lothar Lederose, 10,000 Things, module and mass production in production in Chinese art.
00:05:53
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And it tells a story about how objects were produced technically.
00:06:01
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What was your last international trip?
00:06:05
Speaker
I think this was 2020 before the pandemic to India.
00:06:10
Speaker
Of course, I've been to European, to Germany and the UK in the meantime, but to Asia, that would have been India.
00:06:17
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Where did you go in India?
00:06:19
Speaker
Oh, Agra and Delhi, the Rajasthan area.
00:06:23
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It was a wonderful trip.
00:06:24
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What is the coolest art or decorative arts discovery that you've made?
00:06:30
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It's a funny story.
00:06:31
Speaker
When I was in Shanghai and working for my PhD or researching for my PhD, I browsed the markets, the street markets, and I found a vase which I thought was Wanli period, so Ming Dynasty, early 17th century.
00:06:48
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I bought it for, you know, very cheaply.
00:06:51
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And I wasn't sure I wanted to make sure it is really what I thought.
00:06:56
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And I went to the Shanghai Museum and asked the head of the porcelain department there, and he confirmed that it was one-li period.
00:07:06
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So I was sure it was a great, it was a good, good bargain.
00:07:10
Speaker
All right.
00:07:12
Speaker
Shall we talk about China's southern paradise?
00:07:15
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Yes, yes.
Describing and Dating the Jade Cups
00:07:16
Speaker
So today's curious objects, as I mentioned, are two very similar jade cups, one from the Beijing Palace Museum, the other belonging to the Cleveland Museum of Art.
00:07:25
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Clarissa, what do these pieces look like and how big are they?
00:07:30
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You have to imagine maybe it's about the size of your fist, two cups and round cups with handles.
00:07:40
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And the handles are shaped in the form of little figures that grasp the rim of the cups.
00:07:50
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So symmetrically arranged.
00:07:54
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And they both sit on clouds.
00:07:57
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So tell me about these figures, which are fairly numerous.
00:08:02
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What are these figures?
00:08:03
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Yeah, the handles are form figures, but at the same time you have on the walls in low relief, you have a procession of 11 figures.
00:08:18
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One is an elderly man who carries a lingif fungus, a magic fungus.
00:08:27
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And the other is a woman, a central figure is a woman who carries a
00:08:32
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played with peaches.
00:08:33
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So this gives us a hint that these are immortals because the queen mother of the West who is an immortal presents these peaches as a sign for longevity, as wishes for longevity.
00:08:50
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And
00:08:52
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The Lingzi fungus is also a motif for conveying wishes for longevity and immortality.
00:09:02
Speaker
Is there additional religious or secular meaning to these figures?
00:09:06
Speaker
They're related to Taoism.
00:09:09
Speaker
Is that right?
00:09:11
Speaker
That's right.
00:09:12
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And Taoism is also associated with the quest for immortality.
00:09:18
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So in this case, we have motifs that are associated with immortality and may express wishes for longevity on the cup.
00:09:32
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Now I've referred to the material simply as jade, but of course jade comes in different varieties and qualities.
00:09:38
Speaker
What type of jade are these cups made of and why does that matter?
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, there are different types of jade.
00:09:46
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We talk about it's a very hard mineral.
00:09:50
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We call it nephrite that comes in different colors and is most highly valued, especially the colors white or yellowish white, which that's the color of these cups.
00:10:09
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What makes Jade such a valuable and attractive material in the first place?
00:10:17
Speaker
Well, it's beautiful in its different colors.
00:10:24
Speaker
It's very hard to work.
00:10:28
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So you need a lot of time.
00:10:30
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It's time consuming to achieve a relief or a pattern on this hard material.
00:10:41
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And you achieve it by grinding.
00:10:44
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the surface.
00:10:46
Speaker
And this material comes in the form of boulders or pebbles, and then they have to be, you know, in a long, very elaborate process, worked into beautiful vessels or other material, other objects.
00:11:05
Speaker
So it's very difficult to work with.
00:11:07
Speaker
So it's a specialized trade.
00:11:09
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It requires skill and training.
00:11:12
Speaker
That's correct.
00:11:13
Speaker
And you cannot use, for example, steel.
00:11:17
Speaker
It's so hard that you can only work grinded with quartz and sand and water, which makes it a very elaborate process.
00:11:31
Speaker
Now, these cups were once thought to have originated with the Yuan dynasty, which ruled from 1271 to 1368.
00:11:39
Speaker
But now they're dated instead to the Qing dynasty centuries later.
00:11:43
Speaker
What changed?
00:11:46
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Well, scholarship changed these dates.
00:11:51
Speaker
The Yuan dynasty is based on scholarship in the 1960s, 70s.
00:11:58
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In the meantime, China has opened up.
00:12:01
Speaker
Experts can travel.
00:12:03
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We can exchange our ideas with our scholars.
00:12:08
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colleagues in China.
00:12:10
Speaker
Also, we can travel back and forth.
00:12:13
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So material becomes accessible to us.
00:12:17
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We can compare our works of art with each other in different countries.
00:12:24
Speaker
And all this now, we believe that these jade cups are of a later date because
00:12:37
Speaker
on the base of comparison with other materials that has become accessible in the in recent decades.
00:12:43
Speaker
So how would these pieces have likely been used originally when they were made?
00:12:47
Speaker
Were they primarily intended as decorative objects or also for functional use?
00:12:55
Speaker
That's a good question.
The Cultural Importance of Jade in the Qing Dynasty
00:12:57
Speaker
Probably they were not functional, they were really luxury objects.
00:13:02
Speaker
But having said this, we can imagine that they were used as gifts, for example.
00:13:10
Speaker
We talked about the motifs that you can see on the cup.
00:13:13
Speaker
They convey wishes for longevity, so they could
00:13:17
Speaker
have made a birthday gift, for example, with the imperial cup that we have in the exhibition, these were might have been sent as tribute wear to the court.
00:13:32
Speaker
So the best products of a region were sent as tribute to the imperial court in the 18th century.
00:13:39
Speaker
And we can imagine that this cup, for example, was sent
00:13:43
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from the workshop straight to Beijing to be approved or to be vetted and then to be viewed by the emperor and then possibly it would have approved by the emperor and then entered the imperial collection.
00:14:01
Speaker
What would it actually have done in the imperial collection then?
00:14:04
Speaker
I mean, was it in circulation for use by the emperor himself and his family?
00:14:10
Speaker
Was it placed in a treasury for safekeeping and use as a way of storing wealth?
00:14:17
Speaker
What was the function of an object like that?
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, the Tianlong Emperor during which probably these cups were, during whose reign these cups were produced, was an ardent collector and a great connoisseur of all kinds of artistic material.
00:14:36
Speaker
So he was actively involved in collecting works of art.
00:14:40
Speaker
And when something passed his approval, presented to him and passed his approval,
00:14:47
Speaker
and entered the imperial collection, these works of art sent standards for the whole art production in the country.
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:15:27
Speaker
So what was happening politically in China around the time that these were likely made?
00:15:33
Speaker
Well, this was just the situation that there was an emperor who was actively involved in collecting, in commissioning works of art, in being in conversation and in contact with artists, sometimes through intermediary agents.
00:15:57
Speaker
But he commissioned actively
00:16:01
Speaker
works of art collected, he inscribed them, he praised them, and he would even involve in art historical assessment of these works of art.
00:16:12
Speaker
So we have works of art paintings in particular imprinted with the imperial seal by the emperor.
00:16:20
Speaker
Let's talk for a minute about the production process from the mining of the jade in the first place to the production, the carving of these beautiful finished
Craftsmanship and Artistic Standards of Jade
00:16:32
Speaker
works.
00:16:32
Speaker
What were the people like who were actually engaged in that work and what were the skills required?
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, so the jade worker would start from a pebble or a boulder of jade and then would start hollow it out.
00:16:49
Speaker
But we must not imagine that he used some steel
00:16:54
Speaker
tool or something like this.
00:16:56
Speaker
So it was all based on grinding using quartz sand and hollowing first of all the boulder out for a cup for example through grinding and then the material is more and more ground also to work out the low relief that we can see on the cups.
00:17:16
Speaker
This was all ground with quartz sand.
00:17:20
Speaker
So a sand that was as hard as the material that was
00:17:24
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decorated.
00:17:25
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And then the relief also would be sanded down.
00:17:28
Speaker
And finally, to achieve the high polish, maybe a piece of leather would then be used to achieve the sheen and the high polish of these cups.
00:17:42
Speaker
But it would be a very, very time consuming process.
00:17:48
Speaker
Were these artisans, were they generally wealthy?
00:17:53
Speaker
Were they middle class?
00:17:54
Speaker
Were they lower class?
00:17:55
Speaker
What kind of social status was it attached to those tasks?
00:18:01
Speaker
A craftsman started more and more since let's perhaps the 13th, 14th century, were more confidently starting to sign their works.
00:18:12
Speaker
And so establishing a reputation.
00:18:15
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with their names or the names marked just the workshop in which they had the lead or which they run.
00:18:25
Speaker
And craftsmen also, we know that the Qianlong Emperor, for example, had
00:18:34
Speaker
called craftsmen to the core to work in the Imperial Palace workshops in Beijing.
00:18:42
Speaker
And they were very often recruited from the area in the lower Yangtze Delta because the craftsmen there had a high reputation for the high quality works.
00:18:53
Speaker
And he had conversations, direct conversations with
00:18:57
Speaker
with them about certain techniques or they had to explain something to them.
00:19:02
Speaker
But of course, this would have been the level of very high end craftsmanship.
00:19:09
Speaker
So there were certainly different levels of craftsmen working in the workshops.
00:19:17
Speaker
I'm interested in that because for these two cups, I wonder how you would rate the quality of the craftsmanship and consequently the value or expense that they would have represented at the time.
00:19:30
Speaker
Well, the craftsmanship is superb.
00:19:33
Speaker
I don't know whether maybe several people would have been involved for different processes in the production of this object.
00:19:46
Speaker
But definitely we can say they were of very high, both of them are of
00:19:52
Speaker
equally high craftsmanship and quality.
00:19:57
Speaker
And the one in the imperial from the Beijing Palace Museum was approved by the emperor and we know he demanded a very high standard.
00:20:10
Speaker
So we've been talking about these two different cups, one of which is in Beijing, one of which is in Cleveland.
00:20:15
Speaker
Well, they're both now in Cleveland for the time being for the exhibition.
00:20:19
Speaker
But I'm interested in the relationship between the two of them, which visually are almost identical, but one of them became an imperial object and the other one didn't.
00:20:29
Speaker
Just how similar are they to each other?
00:20:31
Speaker
That's, yeah, again, a good question.
00:20:36
Speaker
You will see once, because they are now juxtaposed really to each other, we can see one is the imperial one has a purer white color and is bigger.
00:20:49
Speaker
It is also inscribed with a seal mark or a mark saying copied after antiquity.
00:20:58
Speaker
Whereas the Cleveland cup is not inscribed at all.
00:21:02
Speaker
It is smaller and it has some impurities in the some kind of wains that runs through the material and are perceived, could be perceived as impurities in the material.
00:21:17
Speaker
So the smaller, the Cleveland one was probably, since it's not inscribed, has no imperial seal, it was probably left for the common market, whereas the imperial one was obviously sent to Beijing from the Suzhou workshops to Beijing, approved by the emperor.
00:21:42
Speaker
then inscribed and then entered the imperial collection.
00:21:47
Speaker
Can you tell me a little more about this inscription on the imperial cup?
00:21:52
Speaker
You say that it specifies that this piece was made after an older model.
00:21:58
Speaker
Do you know what that older model would have been?
00:22:01
Speaker
Well, it says after antiquity, Fangu is the two characters.
00:22:07
Speaker
So it may not even be a model.
00:22:09
Speaker
It may be that the motifs, certain motifs of the figures were modeled.
00:22:19
Speaker
after antiquity, so could be associated with an earlier model, but it does not necessarily mean that exactly this cup existed earlier in time and was copied.
00:22:39
Speaker
Certain features of this cup may reference the earlier times.
00:22:50
Speaker
So the Taoist figures themselves might have been modeled off of Taoist figures on earlier pieces, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the overall form of the cup is directly associated with a piece from antiquity.
00:23:07
Speaker
Right.
00:23:08
Speaker
And the Taoist figures themselves, maybe their hairstyles, clothing, or the idea of the Taoist immortal itself refers to antiquity.
00:23:20
Speaker
Are you aware of any pieces from antiquity with similar types of figures or elements of figures?
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's a common phenomenon during the Qianlong time.
00:23:30
Speaker
This emperor has produced under the Qianlong Emperor a number of objects bearing the two characters Fanggu in imitating antiquity were produced during this time, and not only in the material of jade.
00:23:51
Speaker
What can you tell me about the provenance of these two pieces and how one of them ended up in Beijing while the other one is in Ohio?
Provenance and Exhibition of the Jade Cups
00:23:59
Speaker
Well, the first part of the story probably I have told you is that they were both probably, we believe, produced in the Suzhou area in workshops there based on the high workmanship, on the high quality of the workmanship.
00:24:19
Speaker
and the reputation that the Suzhou craftsmen had at the time in Suzhou.
00:24:25
Speaker
One was of a lesser quality, clearly the Cleveland one, and was produced for the common market, whereas the one with the pristine quality,
00:24:40
Speaker
ended up in the imperial collection.
00:24:44
Speaker
The Cleveland one may have been handed down generation by generation as a luxury halloom or luxury object.
00:24:56
Speaker
And then at the beginning of the 20th century, China opened.
00:25:01
Speaker
There were many foreigners in the country.
00:25:05
Speaker
Some of them bought works of art on the market.
00:25:09
Speaker
This may have been available beginning of the 20th century.
00:25:16
Speaker
In any case, we do not know exactly how, but it ended up in the West before 1952.
00:25:25
Speaker
So before the country was before China closed the market in 1949.
00:25:34
Speaker
So it must have left the country before this ended up in a
00:25:39
Speaker
Ohio family, which then gave it an anonymous, made it an anonymous gift to the Cleveland Museum in the 1950s.
00:25:51
Speaker
So how do these cups fit into the larger narrative being told by this exhibition and the other 200 works included in it?
00:26:01
Speaker
Well, the exhibition is about the culture and the artistic production of the lower Yangtze Delta, which was in Chinese, throughout Chinese history, one of the most productive areas.
00:26:16
Speaker
And so much we associate with traditional China today originated or flourished in this region.
00:26:25
Speaker
And jade is, of course, also a material we associate closely with
00:26:31
Speaker
China.
00:26:32
Speaker
And during the 18th century, the jade production was the center, centers of jade production were in the Suzhou area, which are part of the lower Yangtze Delta.
00:26:45
Speaker
And
00:26:46
Speaker
We believe that both these cups were once produced in this area and make a contribution to illustrating the richness of culture and artistic production of the lower Yangtze Delta in the exhibition.
00:27:05
Speaker
Well, Clarissa von Spieh, this has been a pleasure.
00:27:07
Speaker
Thanks so much for speaking with me.
00:27:09
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:27:13
Speaker
Again, the exhibition is China's Southern Paradise at the Cleveland Museum of Art, open now until January.
00:27:19
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Bellotta.
00:27:24
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:27:28
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm Ben Miller.