Japanese Bronze Censer, ca. 1900
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GUEST:
It was given to my husband like 40 years ago, just by a friend. They had been out partying. And I don't know what it is. I don't know if it has a function. I'm not sure what it's even made out of. I thought it was from India, but now I don't know.
APPRAISER:
I always like to start with the basics.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Which is, it's an elephant.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And it's not just an ordinary elephant, it's an elephant with a structure on its back. It has a dragon, and this is a saddle cloth, and then there's this other blanket that goes over the top of that, and these pendant tassels, all of which have little loops here that suspended other tassels. And as we flip this around, one of the things that we notice is the surface. It has this chocolate brown color. So in terms of where did it come from, I think it's safe to say it's Asian. You knew it was... you thought India.
GUEST:
We were in the right line.
APPRAISER:
You were in the right place, so we're trying to narrow this down. India doesn't really have a tradition of using dragons as part of the decoration. China and Japan do. One of the features that is associated with Chinese and Japanese bronze is a form called a censer, and a censer is meant to hold incense. And the smoke from the incense rises up and comes out of the apertures.
GUEST:
My daughter-in-law was right; she said it was an incense burner.
APPRAISER:
But not just an ordinary incense burner, this a very decorative incense burner. You get, in both China and Japan, the use of elephants holding these pagoda structures on the back that we use as censers.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
The difference is in the details, and one of those details is the color of the patina. This chocolate brown color is specifically associated with Japanese bronze making. The kind of brush stroke wash of the gilding is also associated with late Meiji bronze making, and mid to late Meiji, so we're talking about somewhere in the 1880s, 1890s, maybe as late as 1900. Now, the other clue that substantiates my hunch that this is Japanese, not Chinese, is this is called a minogame. Minogame, which is this turtle, this sea turtle that rises from the depths of the water very infrequently and lives to be a very old, old age. And it has all this kind of seaweed, water grasses, the moss, algae that grows onto the shell, and that's exactly what we have here. So this is a Japanese version of a Chinese 18th century bronze censer. So you get the Chinese versions that look very similar.
GUEST:
Right...
APPRAISER:
In fact, so similar that they're difficult to tell apart.
GUEST:
Never would have thought.
APPRAISER:
Pretty decent shape, even considering the missing elements. It's big, it's splashy, it attracts attention. Well, I think that conservatively, it's in the $2,000 to $4,000 range at auction, could easily do a lot more. The Chinese version of this is worth about $20,000 to $30,000.
GUEST:
Hm!
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