AN INSCRIBED ZITAN 'PRUNUS' SCROLL WEIGHT SIGNED LI FANGYING AND CAI JIA, QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

of rectangular form, carved on one side in kaishu with a four-character inscription reading Shu ying heng xie ('Sparse shadows slant across') followed by an inscription and a seal mark reading Li Fangying, between thin branches bearing small prunus blossoms and extending diagonally across the weight near the upper and lower sections, the reverse carved with an inscription in xingshu and signed Cai Jia lin Youjun shu (‘Emulating the calligraphy of Right Army Commandant’) and followed by a seal mark reading Cai Jia

Qing Jiang is recorded as having lived from 1685-1755, while He Jing (967-1028) was a Song scholar. Li Fangying (1695-1755), personal name , was a native of Tongzhou (present day Nantong, Jiangsu). A famous poet and painter, he had several sobriquets among which were Qingjiang ('River on a Clear Day') and Qiuchi ('Autumn Pond'). From a family of successful officials he himself served several times as xianling (county magistrate) and zhizhou (chief of a prefecture) early in his life. He lived in Jieyuan ('The Garden of Borrowing') in Nanjing after he was wrongly dismissed from office. He frequently visited Yangzhou to sell his own paintings, and he was one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou. His paintings of pine tree, bamboo, orchid, and plum blossoms were very popular.

Cai Jia (1686-1779) was a native of Danyang, Jiangsong.  His personal name was Songyuan, and his sobriquet was Xuetang ('Snow Hall'). He lived in Yangzhou for a long time and was a well-known painter. In his inscription he refers to Wang Xizhi (303-361).

Plum blossoms so soaked with dew they have never dried,
Their purity so suffuses the poem in my heart that lines escape the cold.
It’s just like the way Yangzhou attracted He Xun,
For the heartfelt secrets of noble sophisticates are each and every the same.

The four-character phrase Shuying hengxie ('Sparse shadows slant across') is taken from the poem Shanyuan xiaomei (“Little Plums in a Mountain Garden”) by the Song poet Lin Bu (967-1028), personal name Junfu, a native of Qiantang (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang), a famous poet known for his finely crafted regulated verses. He was also known for his passion for his pet cranes and plum trees. Never married, he lived most of his life with his meiqi hezi (plum tree as my wife and pet crane as my son). Emperor Renzong of the Song (r. 1022 –1063) conferred on him the posthumous title Hejing xiansheng ('Master Harmony and Peace').