Carved to one side in shallow relief with four Manchurian cranes feeding beside a meandering stream running through a rocky landscape below shallows and a parrot amidst a verdant landscape and flowering trees. One leaf with a five line inscription of a poem and a cyclical date Qianlong Guizhou. Surrounded by a key pattern border and roundes encircling smaller cranes. The reverse carved with a crane, parrot, quail, swallows, pheasants and numerous small birds amidst trees, surrounded by cracked-ice and berries border. Height 181 cm. Lenght 235 cm.
Damages, repairs. Later hinges.
Purchased by a Swedish Collector in May, 1988 in London, lot 127b, thence by descent.
The poem is translated as: Malus is tender and beautiful, its stalk moist. Peony is still the king, bringing wind from the east
The only ones that are happy are the resting birds
Whole life are amongst the flowers, never get tired.