Lot 108 Dα

The numerous religious and secular buildings of the Forbidden City, the palaces outside of Beijing such as Chengde and the ancestral sacrificial halls at the mausolea, all were furnished not just with images but also with accoutrements.
Large censers, lanterns, braziers, cranes, luduan and elephants were arranged in pairs in the omperial throne halls. Many of them were made in the imperial cloisonné workshop.

In the cold Beijing winters the most convenient way of heating the halls were large braziers which were filled with burning charcoal. They were of large size, multi-tiered and rose from three or four elephant head feet or cabriole legs. Heating started on the first day of the eleventh month, the Stove Lighting Day. According to rank each person of the imperial household received a certain amount of fuel.

The current brazier differs from the Qianlong era braziers, which were round or octagonal and higher in shape, by its low and square form. The apocryphal six-character seal mark points toward the Jingtai era (1450-1457), however its wording is unusual and differs from the standard Jingtai seal marks found on Ming and Qing cloisonné enamel ware.

清約1900年
銅胎掐絲琺瑯纏獅鈕枝蓮紋承四足大薰爐
「景泰年內造製」款

來源：意大利私人收藏

可比：《Das Leben in der Verbotenen Stadt》（清代宮廷生活），
香港 1989年，第 56頁，圖 69

紫禁城内部的各个厅殿，都是用各式各样的珍宝装饰的。
大型香炉、灯笼、薰炉，仙鹤和大象，被成对陈设于各厅室。这些珍宝诞生于十九世纪中叶的皇家景泰蓝作坊，因而多数是用铜胎掐丝珐琅制成的。

在中国北方的寒冬，对厅殿加热取暖最高效的方法就是用熏炉。从11月的第一天起，人们开始使用熏炉，并在盆中装满木炭，使热量通过开口散开。在朝中担任官职的人能根据自己的职级获得相应数量的炭火。
这个薰炉的形状和高度都和人们所熟悉的乾隆时期出品大有不同。 其落款“「景泰年內造製」款”表明它产于景泰时期（1450-1456年），这是中国景泰蓝艺术的鼎盛时期。该熏炉上的落款样式其实并不常见，因为大多数景泰落款是由“景泰年制”四个字组成的，主要在明末清初较多使用。