Bronze & Brass

This is the biggest and heaviest piece in the collection, and the "big heavy bronze base". It isn't a base, though: it's a vessel. It is a long, shallow rectangular basin with straight sides. A rolled, slightly everted lip sits over a band of about twenty raised round bosses (stud or "rice-grain" ornament) on a finely diapered ground. The ends carry stylised kui-dragon C-scroll handles, and it stands on four bracket feet shaped like ruyi clouds.

Outside, the patina is smooth chocolate-brown, darker on the high spots, the kind Japanese founders applied chemically and then waxed. Inside, the surface is paler and golden with green verdigris where water has stood (P05, P14). That is a good sign: the basin was actually used for flowers or bonsai.

In Japan a vessel of this shape is a suiban (水盤) or doban (銅盤). It is a water basin for ikebana in the moribana style, where flowers stand in a pin-holder in shallow water. It is equally a display tray for bonsai or suiseki (viewing stones). Westerners have always called them "jardinières" or "planters", and in the trade they sell as "bonsai pots". The boss band and the dragon handles copy Chinese Ming-dynasty bronze censers, and Japanese buyers of the period prized that Chinese literati look.

The important feature is underneath. Cast into the base is a raised square seal of four characters in seal script, in two columns (P04, shown enlarged in the second and third images). Turned and enlarged, the right-hand column reads best as 宣 over 德 and the left as 年 over 製. That gives 宣德年製, "made in the Xuande reign". The Xuande emperor (reigned 1426–1435) is legendary for the bronze censers cast in his reign, and Chinese and Japanese founders put his mark on bronzes for the next five hundred years as homage. A Xuande mark on a vessel like this is almost never a date; it is a statement of style. It is an "apocryphal" mark, honest by the conventions of the time, and should be catalogued as "Xuande mark, later". The reading itself is only medium-confidence.

Why we lean Japanese rather than Chinese: the casting is very even and sharp, the exterior patina is uniform and applied rather than accumulated, the seal plaque is flat and crisp, and the proportions (long, low, with small separate feet) are typical of Takaoka export suiban that borrowed a Chinese reign mark. A Chinese late-Qing censer of this form would more likely be squarer, deeper and heavier-walled. A small paper or foil label shows on the side in the night photographs. Keep it, because old dealer labels add provenance.

This is a baluster vase with a ringed shoulder and a tall cylindrical neck. It has two ruyi-scroll handles and sits in a separate dished ring on three scrolled legs. The body has a high-relief band in darker bronze picked out with gilding. Photographed under a flashlight at night (P18–P20) it shows a tiger among bamboo and rocks. In daylight (P38, P50) it shows a coiling dragon among clouds.

The handles, stand, neck rings and proportions are identical in all five photographs. So this is almost certainly one vase photographed from opposite sides rather than a pair. Tiger on one face and dragon on the other is the classic Japanese ryūko (龍虎) pairing. The dragon of the clouds and the tiger of the bamboo grove stand for heaven and earth, yang and yin, and the image recurs in Japanese painting, sword fittings and temple carving. Vases like this were made for the tokonoma alcove and for export, often as a usubata or kodai-style flower vessel. The bright brass liner inside the neck (P19, P20) let it hold water for arrangements.

The flashlight shots show a fine line inside the rim. It could be a scratch in the liner or a hairline crack in the bronze, and that difference matters to value.

This is a broad, squat ovoid jar with a short neck. A wide frieze around the shoulder carries pairs of confronting crested birds (feng phoenixes) and kui dragons on a fine leiwen ("thunder pattern") spiral ground. The frieze is divided by notched vertical flanges, and there are small lug handles. Above and below, the surface is plain with a single raised fillet.

The design deliberately quotes the bronze ritual wine and water vessels of China's Shang and Western Zhou dynasties (about 1600–771 BC), the archaic bronzes that every later Chinese and Japanese connoisseur collected and imitated. The grey-green, faintly silvery skin is a chemically applied "excavated" patina meant to suggest burial. Under strong light it looks almost white (P08, P43); in shade it looks slate-green (P49).

The line-work is clean, even and slightly flat, and the birds are drawn with a stylised elegance. That is characteristic of Japanese Takaoka archaistic production of the early twentieth century, when such pieces were very fashionable. Chinese Republic-period souvenir copies tend to have muddier ground patterns and rougher casting. To be absolutely clear: this is a twentieth-century decorative bronze in archaic style, not an ancient vessel.

We first catalogued these as two pieces, a dragon charger and a shou bowl. The owner confirms they are the top and bottom of one object. That makes it a large round cloisonné covered box (he, 盒), one of the classic forms of Beijing cloisonné, used to hold sweets, seals, ink cakes or gifts and displayed with its lid on.

The lid (P03, P27, P40, shown face-up on a plate stand) carries a black-ground roundel at the centre. In it a red, frontal "face-on" dragon with five claws coils around a flaming pearl among multicoloured clouds above stylised breaking waves. Around it, the turquoise field is covered with "Indian lotus" scroll, large stylised lotus heads on curling tendrils, with a dark-blue ruyi-cloud border at the edge. The five-clawed dragon was formally the emperor's beast; on export work after 1900 it is simply the grandest decorative choice. The pearl it chases is read as wisdom, the moon or perfection.

The base (P28, P29) has a turquoise cloud-scroll ground with large dark-blue seal-script shou (壽, longevity) characters. These alternate with butterflies and with sprays of auspicious fruit, pomegranate (many sons) and Buddha's-hand citron (blessing), which with the peach make up the "Three Abundances" (sanduo 三多). The butterfly is a pun as well: hu-die (蝴蝶) sounds like die (耋), a great age. Its interior is enamelled plain turquoise and shows crazing and a crack line. That is what the "blue interior" photographs show.

Dragon above and longevity below make this a birthday or presentation piece, a wish for long life under heaven's favour. The wire-work is fine, the enamel fill even and the pitting mild, which points to the earlier part of the range (about 1900–1930) rather than 1970s PRC export.

This is a shouldered baluster vase with a waisted neck and flared brass lip. The deep cobalt ground is entirely filled with tiny wire cloud scrolls, a filler that keeps the enamel from cracking during firing and gives the surface its shimmer. On the front is a large peony in pink, red and yellow among green leaves. A smaller spray of pink blossoms is on the reverse, and a green ruyi-lappet collar circles the neck.

The peony is the "king of flowers" in China and stands for wealth and honour (fugui 富貴). The bright "Republic" palette, the cloud-wire ground and the clean finishing are typical of Beijing export workshops of the 1920s–50s; the same vases were made in enormous numbers into the 1980s.

One open question: P24, taken in a different room, shows a blue vase with only the small pink spray and the same green collar. It is most likely this vase's reverse. Its neck looks a touch taller, though, so it is worth checking the boxes for a second vase before pricing.

The sinseollo (신선로, 神仙爐, "brazier of the immortals") is the showpiece of Korean royal-court cuisine. A central chimney holds live charcoal and rises through a ring-shaped moat. Thin slices of beef, pan-fried fish and vegetable jeon, mushrooms, gingko nuts, pine nuts and egg-garnish strips are arranged in concentric colour rings in the moat, and hot broth is poured over at the table. The legend has it named for a Joseon-era scholar who withdrew to the mountains to live like an immortal and cooked his meals in a pot of his own design.

Two pots appear in the photographs; P31 and P42 each show both at once. Pot A has a lid engraved with 福 (fortune) and 壽 (longevity) medallions in roundels, cut-out cloud-scroll lid handles, drop-ring handles on the bowl and a dished foot. Pot B has a pierced, openwork scroll fire-box base. Both have the tarnished, slightly greyish look of post-war Korean brass. They were made in large numbers for Korean households and as gifts for American service families. A full sinseollo assembly is a lid with chimney collar, a moat bowl, a chimney, and a pedestal fire-box with a drip tray.

This is a palm-sized oval container with a domed lid pierced all over in a honeycomb mesh, around a central openwork flower medallion. A hinged bail handle is mounted on lugs at the sides. It was first read as a Korean brazier, but the form is the classic Chinese hand warmer, shǒulú (手爐).

From the Ming dynasty onward, scholars and ladies carried these in a sleeve or on the lap in unheated winter rooms. They were filled with smouldering charcoal dust or rice husks banked in ash, so the mesh let warmth out without exposing the embers. Fine Ming and Qing examples by named makers (Zhang Mingqi 張鳴岐 is the most famous) are serious collector's items. This one's bright, silvery colour suggests baitong (白銅, "white copper", a nickel-rich alloy) or nickel plating. The clean, machine-even mesh points to the 20th century.

This is a group of round brass rice and soup bowls (bari or jubal, 주발), some stacked with fitted lids. The interesting one is in P48 and P22: a lidded bowl whose foot holds a stamped square seal of two stacked pairs of the character 喜 (joy). That is effectively the double-happiness 囍 sign of a wedding. Around the sides are roundels with 福 (fortune) and a three-comma whirl crest like the sam-taegeuk, plus an engraved chrysanthemum spray. In Korea a covered rice bowl was a classic wedding gift; the bride brought her own set of yugi to her new household.

The question for this group is the alloy. The thick, deep-gold walls suggest ordinary turned brass. Genuine bangjja yugi, hand-forged high-tin bronze, looks paler and greyer-gold, shows faint hammer facets, and rings like a temple bell for several seconds when tapped. It is in demand again in Korea, partly because of its reputation for detecting spoiled food and resisting bacteria, and good pieces command real money.

These are four matching round brass boxes. Each lid is a sunken plate with a central hole and four large characters cut through in an "archaic" brush-script style, one in each quarter. They are the most puzzling objects in the group.

We first hoped the four characters would read 福壽康寧 (fortune, longevity, health, peace), the most common four-character blessing. Several of the forms don't match standard seal script, though. One looks like "ICI" with a hook, and others like branching trees. They are probably decorative pseudo-archaic characters in the "oracle-bone" manner, a fashionable motif on 1960s–70s Korean and Taiwanese export brass.

As for function, ash and a stubbed cigarette drop through the centre hole and the cut-outs, and the lid hides them from view. A covered ashtray was a staple Korean gift of that period and is the most likely reading. Three plain boxes with flat lids, a small central boss and turned rings appear nearby. They may be the same vessels with solid lids, or plain covered boxes (hap, 盒).

Laid out on the cloth in P37 are nine identical tiny round cups, about the size of a soju or sake cup. Sets of brass drinking cups were a standard part of the Korean household brass set and of the boxed gift sets sold in Seoul's Itaewon and at US PX stores. With them are six to eight stemmed brass goblets (P22, P23, P45). These are a generic export form made in Korea and in vast numbers in India, used as wine or liqueur cups, or in Korean ancestral rites (jesa) as offering cups. A couple of small footed bowls complete it.

About eleven small brass discs with centre holes (P16, P23) are probably bobèches, the drip pans that sit on candlesticks, and likely belong with the candlesticks in the next lot.

These are two long pierced castings, each showing a coiled dragon chasing a flaming pearl among cloud scrolls, with knob feet or lugs on the back. This is the standard "dragon trivet" or wall plaque, made by the hundreds of thousands for export from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea between the 1950s and 1980s. They were set under hot dishes or hung in pairs on a wall. They are attractive and very decorative, but not rare.

The small separate openwork piece (P37 lower right, P46) has a ruyi-cloud outline and a hanging loop. It may be a key-hanger plaque or a drawer escutcheon, or possibly a detached handle from one of the hot pots. Try it against the sinseollo lids.

This is the miscellany. The most striking piece is a tall tapered brass cone with incised bands, hanging from a chain (P22). It is probably a hanging bell with a chain-held striker, though it could also be a hanging incense cone or a very large candle snuffer. Around it are three or four small cast bells with knob finials, a pair of short candlesticks, and two broad, domed bases engraved with flowers (P37 top left). The domed pieces are probably the bases of candlesticks or oil lamps whose columns have gone astray, and they may take the drip pans from the previous lot.

All of this is generic Asian export brass of the mid-20th century. Korea and India both made it, and none of it is diagnostic of either.

This is a copper server with a serrated cutting edge. It is a rice-cake (tteok) or cake server, though Americans used them as pie servers. The slender handle ends in a lobed cloud-head finial (yeouimeori, 여의머리). On the handle is a relief crane standing among rocks and reeds. The crane is one of Korea's "ten symbols of longevity" (sipjangsaeng, 十長生), with the sun, mountains, water, rocks, clouds, pine, the herb of immortality, turtles and deer. They run through Korean decorative art from royal screens to gift spoons.

With it is a thin rectangular brass tray with folded edges and a lightly engraved field of bamboo or foliage. Server and tray were very likely bought together as a boxed set.

This is a flat sheet-brass fish with embossed scales and fins and a hanging chain, seen in several photographs at the edge of the table. In Korea and China the fish is an emblem of abundance, because 魚 (yu, fish) sounds like 餘 (yu, surplus). It is also an emblem of vigilance, because fish never close their eyes. That is why traditional Korean chest locks were cast in the shape of a fish: so the household's valuables would be watched over day and night. This piece is a mid-century wall hanging or key hanger in that spirit, not a lock.

The owner confirms there is no cast iron in this lot, so these heavy black discs are bronze with a dark patinated or lacquered finish. That is a sensible industrial choice: bronze doesn't rust, and it was the metal of choice for quality hotel, bank, theatre and marine fittings.

P51 shows a broad dished disc, perhaps 16–20 in across, with a stepped rim and a short capped cylindrical hub standing up in the centre. P52 shows the underside, or a second base: a raised rim and a large central bore with machined threads, roughly 2–3 in across. A thread that size takes a pipe or post, not a lamp rod.

Our best guess is that these are the weighted feet of bronze rope stanchions. These are the posts that held velvet ropes in bank lobbies, theatres, hotels and museums from the 1920s to the 1960s. The posts screw into a heavy dished base exactly like this one, and bronze examples were finished in dark "statuary bronze". The capped hub in P51 would then be the stub of the post, or a socket cover.

Other strong candidates include a commercial pedestal-table or bar-stool foot (bronze for upscale bars and soda fountains), a flagpole or banner stand base, the foot of a floor lamp or torchère, and a marine fitting such as a mast or davit step. Given the Asian bronze in the same estate, another possibility is the stand of a large Japanese bronze lantern or statue. Japanese pedestals, though, are usually more ornamental than these plain machined discs.

This is a round, flat pilgrim or "moon" flask in grey salt-glazed stoneware. It has a cobalt-ringed neck and a blue cork-lined stopper. Four square blue lugs are threaded with red and gold cord for carrying, and the body is covered in impressed rosette roundels picked out in manganese purple. Inset in the centre is a cobalt medallion with a red leaping stag pursued by a yellow hound.

The base (P41) is impressed with a two-line mark. The second line clearly reads HÖHR-GRENZHAUSEN, the twin towns at the heart of the Westerwald "Kannenbäckerland" (jug-bakers' country), which has made blue-and-grey salt-glazed stoneware since the 1500s. The first line is weakly struck. It reads either as MERKEL[BACH], for Reinhold Merkelbach of Grenzhausen, a well-documented maker of hand-decorated stoneware with hunting stags and hounds, or as KUNSTWERK[STÄTTE], a generic "art workshop" mark used by several firms. Either way it is a mid-century decanter of the kind sold to tourists and to American soldiers stationed in Germany, and probably travelled home the same way as the Korean brass.

This is a small square white plate. Rotated, its stamp reads PERMATIC over PAT. PEND. (patent pending). In the centre is a round socket with four square bayonet notches, a twist-lock fitting that takes a part with four lugs. It was photographed the day before everything else, against a dark cloth, which suggests someone thought it belonged to something.

We couldn't trace a "Permatic" brand. "Pat. Pend." with no number usually marks a short-lived mid-century product. Best guess: the mounting plate for a fixture, lamp holder, shelf bracket or furniture leg. It's worth trying against the black bases (previous lot), any lamp parts or stands, and the hot-pot fire-boxes before it is thrown away.

This is the large ivory-and-gold service that fills the background of half the brass photographs. The backstamp (P61) is unambiguous: NORITAKE CHINA, a gold M inside a green laurel wreath tied with a ribbon, then JAPAN / 4915 / CONCORD. The decoration is an ivory rim band with a trailing wreath of green and russet grape leaves and blue-black grapes, a pale blue-green panelled border, a scalloped gold ring around the well, and a centre bouquet of pink roses and blue and white flowers. It is finished in gold.

Noritake made Concord in about 1948–51. That was the first years after the war, when the Nagoya factory was rebuilding its American export trade. The wreathed-M mark marked JAPAN rather than OCCUPIED JAPAN places this set at about 1949–1953, which agrees with the pattern dates.

From the stacks in P25 and P27–P30 we count, roughly, 18–24 dinner plates, 15–18 rimmed soups, 10–15 salad or bread plates, 10–12 cups and saucers, fruit or sauce dishes, and a creamer and sugar. That is a full service for twelve with extras. Large intact mid-century Noritake services are common, so the market is buyer-friendly. Condition and completeness matter more than anything else. Note that Concord 4915 is often confused online with a different, later blue Noritake 'Concord' pattern (6207).

Two photographs show only the backstamp: 'Fine China' over a gold oval with Sango in script, JAPAN, then NANCY and a copyright sign. Sango was a Japanese export brand sold through American department stores. 'Nancy' is a pink rose and rosebud pattern with grey-green leaves and gold trim. The © style of the mark places it in the 1960s–70s. It's an attractive but mass-market service with weak resale demand, and it reads as everyday china next to the Noritake.

The fork back is stamped WESTMORLAND [logo] STERLING (P06/P54). The handle has a symmetrical C-scroll tip, a repeated scroll at the shoulder and several parallel grooves down the stem. That matches Westmorland's 'George & Martha Washington' pattern of 1940, one of the most popular American sterling patterns of the mid-century bridal-registry era. P56 is a hollow-handle knife: a thin sterling shell filled with cement around a stainless blade.

For once, sterling is worth more as flatware than as metal. With silver at about $61 per troy ounce (30 September 2026), a solid dinner fork of about 45–49 g holds about $80–90 of melt value, and a pattern buyer pays about the same or more. A hollow-handle knife holds only 10–15 g of recoverable silver and should always be sold as a pattern piece, never scrapped.