i4uuu Collection Museum Debuts a 16th Century Chinese Bamboo Carving Masterpiece by Zhu Sansong The i4uuu Collection Museum announces the acquisition of a Chinese literati art masterpiece, a bamboo brush pot or Bitong by Zhu Sansong (active 1573-1619) of the Jiading School.
characters, Li Shu or Li style calligraphy, which reads “ San Song”. A two character rectangular seal follows the signature. This brush pot is a true testimony of the old Chinese text account of Jiading school bamboo carving as “ to use knife instead of brush to draw painting and write calligraphy”. The fact that the signature is in archaic characters and that there is a carved seal of the carver is consistent with signature style of other Jiading school carvers such as Zhu Ying, Gu Jue, and Wu Zhifan.
Extant works of Zhu family are extremely rare. Other known Zhu Sansong bamboo carving works are in the collections of the National Palace Museum in Taipei and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As previously mentioned, the i4uuu brush pot shares the same carving style and exquisite quality with the incense holder in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The well-known brush pot with Zhu Sansong signature in the National Palace Museum has shallow relief carving with neither openwork nor original compositional design. Based on the criteria set by Jin Yuanjue, it would be safe to conclude that the two Chinese bamboo works signed by Zhu Sansong in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and i4uuu Collection Museum are both original works by the Ming Dynasty master and the one in the National Palace Museum is a later copy with apocryphal signature.
Reference URL:
Sotheby's HK$5,1600,000 Chinese Bamboo brush pot
http://search.sothebys.com/jsps/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=4HZ4B
The incense holder in the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ming/hob_1995.271.htm
The brush pot in the National Palace Museum:
http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/e04010906.htm
About i4uuu Collection Museum
i4uuu Collection Museum is a museum established by the internet conglomerate, i4uuu Group. The i4uuu Collection consists of more than 2000 important Asian art works collected in the span of 20 years by the founder of i4uuu Group. The Collection is known for its holdings of Asian sculpture, East Asian painting and calligraphy, oriental ceramics and Zen art. The Museum attained world fame in early 2005 when it announced the existence of the original 13th Century manuscript of the important Zen Buddhism book, Mumonkan or the Gateless Gate. The Museum website is http://arts.i4uuu.com.
