清十八世紀 黃花梨刻梅花圖筆筒 《阮元銘》、《庚申中秋祝喆寫》款

題識：
木公木公，其腹空空，入書畫室，乃實其中，既助管城之雄，而久爲賤詩之筒，君子得之將子孫永保於無窮。
濡毫應覺春先到，寫影無如月最真。

This brushpot bears the signature of Zhu He, zi Mingfu, hao Xijian, a juren of 1760 from Haiming in Zhejiang province, who lived in Jiaxing. He was renowned for his poetry and paintings of plum blossoms, which were considered to rival those of Jin Nong (1687-1763) and Chen Zhuan (d. 1758). The inscription further indicates that the brushpot was made to be presented as a gift to the famous scholar official Ruan Yuan (1764-1849), a jinshi of 1789, whose biography is discussed in Arthur W. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, Taipei, 1991, pp. 399-402. The inscriptions can be translated as follows:

As you load your brush, you’ll realise spring is already there
To sketch the shadows no one does it more authentically than the moon.
Best of trees, best of trees,
Its belly is as empty as can be,
But when it enters the calligraphy and painting studio,
It successes in having that emptiness filled.
It has both enhanced the weak prowess of my brush,
And long served as holder for my poor poems.
It a noble gentleman obtains it, he should bequeath it to descendants,
So they can preserve it forever more.

While the first couplet was taken from the poem Ji Dongshansi zhanglao Zhaiquzhong suo huamei [Sent to the Abbot of East Mountain Temple, Zhaiquzhong, requesting that he paint a picture of prunus], composed by the Yuan dynasty poet Zhang Yu (1283-1350), the second inscription was probably composed by Ruan Yuan to praise a brushpot, possibly the present lot.