清康熙 江千里製黑漆嵌螺鈿踏雪尋梅圖盤 《千里》款

centred to the interior with a medallion depicting the scholar Meng Haoran on horseback carrying a blossoming branch of prunus, his two attendants carrying his belongings beside him while on foot, all beneath a blooming prunus tree and a pair of birds in flight, the trio navigating a path between bamboo growing from a rocky cliff on the right, and a wutong tree, the silver-mounted mouthrim with a ring of stylised florets, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, silver and gold foils on a deep-brown lacquer ground, the plain lacquered underside inlaid with two characters in seal script reading Qianli within a square

Created by the master carver Jiang Qianli, active in Yangzhou during the late Ming and early Qing dynasty, this dish is a striking example of the burgauté technique or luo dian in Chinese, which involves the labour intensive process of cutting and inlaying thousands of small and thin shell pieces. The vessel is then covered with a thick coat of lacquer which is ground and polished to reveal the decoration. As the shell fragments come in different hues, the lacquer artisan has to carefully select the small fragments to produce a pattern that matches and is uniformly brilliant. Wares made in burgauté began to be produced in the 17th century, and continued to be popular throughout the Qing dynasty. Compare the other dish by Jiang Qianli offered in this sale, lot 36, and additional notes on his work.

The scene on this dish depicts the celebrated Tang poet Meng Haoran (689-740) riding a donkey, while his attendant holds a branch of blossoming prunus. This composition was identified by Ka Bo Tsang in JICSBS, Summer 1994, pp. 4-16, where the author illustrates two Chinese New Year pictures of a similar theme, with the rider identified in the accompanying text.