Chinese porcelain perfume burner, bronze mounted, 18th century 

Rare white porcelain incense burner from China. 
Model in the form of a "gui" vase with archaic decoration of a frieze of Taotie masks.
 
Important mounting in bronze finely chased and gilded with mercury, consisting of a base with four legs with an X brace connected to the upper lip of the vase by two lateral hinges decorated with lion's heads. 
The set is equipped with a handle with Greek cut and a lid finely perforated with a lattice. 
 
The porcelain, China, Dehua kilns, Fujian province, reign of Gangxi (1661-1722). 
 
Good state of preservation. 
 
The bronze frame, Paris, transition of the Louis XV and Louis XVI periods, circa 1760-1770. 
 
Dimensions : 
 
Diameter : 11 cm ; Height : 20 cm 
 
Our view : 
 
The rare incense burner we are presenting consists of a "gui" shaped vase, whose handles have been deliberately cut out to make room for a sublime European mount in finely chased bronze and gilded with mercury. 
This work is characteristic of the production of merchant-merchants and required a collaboration with a great foundryman-cutter who made the frame according to the drawings of an ornamentalist. 
If the lateral hinges with lions are recurrent on the French mounted objects of the first half of the XVIIIth century, the forms of the base and the handle, particularly astonishing, are the fruit of a historical research and a perfect knowledge of the Eastern decorative arts. Indeed, if at first glance the object is confusing and could make one think of a foreign production, the inspiration comes from archaic Chinese bronzes, with handles close to those found on Ding vases. 
This reinterpretation of the antique fits wonderfully with the archaic motifs of the porcelain and demonstrates the erudition of the ornamentalists of the Enlightenment. 
The whole forms a very beautiful object assembled at the crossroads of Eastern and European civilizations. 
The bronzier is not known to us but the extreme quality of the chiseling and the nature of the lion's head of its mounting, are to be brought closer to the great bronziers of the transitional period, like Pierre Gouthière.