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Image © National Museums Scotland
View full screenEwer and cover of gold with projecting peach-shaped panel on each side containing chased scroll work, engraved lotus leaves on neck, spout rising from the mouth of a qilin, cover with bands of diaper and scroll work: China, Qing Dynasty, 18th to middle 19th century, from the imperial Summer Palace at Beijing, presented by the British forces in 1860 to Lieut-General Sir Hope Grant
A.1884.54
Summer Palace, Beijing, China, East Asia
1851
Qing Dynasty, Chinese (Manchu)
Rosewater ewer and cover of gold, pear-shaped body rising from circular spreading foot to tall-waisted flaring neck, on each side a projecting peach-shaped panel containing chased scrollwork, engraved lotus leaves on neck, the spout rising from the mouth of a qilin, cover with bands of diaper and scrollwork
Previous owner: Grant, James Hope, Lieutenant-General, Sir, G.C.B., 1808 - 1875
Looting of the Summer Palace, Peking
Exploring East Asia (08 Feb 2019)
National Museum of Scotland
Henry Knollys, Incidents in the China War of 1860 Compiled from the Private Journals of Sir Hope Grant, G. C. B. (William Blackwood & Son, 1875), p. 194
Greg M. Thomas, The Looting of Yuanming and the Translation of Chinese Art in Europe, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Autumn 2008).
Kevin McLoughlin, " "Rosewater upon his delicate hands": Imperial and Imperialist Readings of the Hope Grant Ewer", in Louise Tythacott, ed., Collecting and Displaying China's "Summer Palace" in the West: The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France (Routledge, 2018), pp. 99-119.
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world cultures, exploring east asia