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Ch. 3: Oriental Ivory Carvings

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ORIENTAL IVORY CARVINGS 125
this being known as the Gama Sennin motif.* Ivory carv­ings also adorned another tortoise-shell cage that sold for $1,025 at this auction.f
This association of living creatures with delicate and artistic work is one among many instances of that happy blending of a love of both nature and art, giving proof of the high endowment of the Chinese in true esthetic percep­tion, one of the many things that helps us to forget the backwardness of Chinese civilization in much that makes for the comfort, health, and prosperity of a people.
In the splendid collection of Prince Kung which was recently sold at auction in New York, and which consisted principally of wonderful jade carvings, there were a few very fine specimens of Chinese ivories, the most striking being two miniature representations of Imperial pleasure barges and a pair of richly adorned vases. One of the pleas­ure craft has a dragon-head prow, while the other is in the form of the feng or phoenix; all the details are carefully elaborated, and through the grillwork of the decks can be seen the Imperial chairs set in each of the staterooms. Of the vases, carved in high relief, one offers a representation of the Chinese goddess of mercy, Kwan-yin, riding on an elephant; another of the immortals is borne to heaven on a dragon's back. The other vase illustrates a procession of Taoist immortals, while hovering over them appears the fairy Si Wang Mu seated on a bird of paradise, t
A Chinese ivory carving, probably some 200 years old, represents the reclining figure of a nude woman with the typically small feet. Its dimensions are 18 cm. in length and about 4 cm. in greatest height, and it is carved out of a
»Catalogue No. 198. fCatalogue No. 194.
JCatalogue of the Prince Kung Collection, sold at the American Art Galleries, Madison Square, New York, February 27, 28, and March 1,1913. See Nos. 202, 207.
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