Cylinder, carved white jade, inscribed, Qianlong period (1736-95)

Cylindrical perfume-holder, white jade, carved and pierced with representations of rocks, figures, and buildings. Upper mark inscribed. Missing cover at the top and a base.

Woodcutters and fishermen in a landscape and river. The carving subject matter relates to the poem inscribed.

Bequeathed by Arthur Wells, accessioned in 1882. This acquisition information reflects that found in the Asia Department registers, as part of a 2022 provenance research project.

Arthur Wells was a Nottingham solicitor and Clerk of the Peace. He was a keen traveller and a Fellow of the Geographical Society. He is considered the first private British collector of Chinese jade and from 1872 his collection of Chinese and Indian jades and other hardstones and Chinese cloisonne objects, was exhibited at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). This collection, numbering 160 objects, was left to the museum in his will. According to a list in the V&A archive, nine of the Chinese pieces came from 'the Summer Palace, Pekin', which refers to the imperial summer retreat Yuanming Yuan, located north of Beijing, which was plundered and destroyed by British and French troops during the Second Opium War in 1860. There is no further information in the archive file allowing us to verify this provenance, but objects looted from Yuanming Yuan were certainly circulating in Britain and Europe in the decades after 1860.

Camphor or other insect repellents would have been inside the reticulated perfume-holder, which in turn would have been placed among clothes or quilts to protect them from months. Such performer-holders are usually made of bamboo instead of jade.

1652-1882