Figure
Category
Ceramics
Date
c. 1825 - 1849
Materials
Glazed stoneware (Shiwan ware)
Measurements
200 mm (H); 310 mm (L); 170 mm (W)
Place of origin
Guangdong Province
Order this imageCollection
Biddulph Grange Garden, Staffordshire
NT 104566
Summary
Figure of a Buddhist lion, Shiwan glazed stoneware, seated on its haunches and with the left forepaw resting on or protecting a lion cub, its head broken off and other areas damaged, probably made in Foshan, Guangdong Province, China, probably second quarter nineteenth century, decorated with green and yellow glazes (now worn).
Full description
Figures of lions had long featured in Chinese Buddhist art, being placed as symbolic guardians near the entrances to temples. Small Chinese porcelain figures of Buddhist lions were exported to Europe from the seventeenth century onwards, where they were used to decorate upper-class interiors and became emblems of ‘China’. The male lion is often shown with a ball under one of its paws, while the lioness is often accompanied by a cub. In the course of the nineteenth century, larger Buddhist lion figures made in glazed stoneware, known as Shiwan ware and made in Guangdong, also began to be exported to Europe. Shiwan ware figures were originally designed as architectural embellishments, to be placed on walls, balustrades and roofs, but in the West they were used as garden ornaments (and also sometimes brought indoors). The bold features of the supernatural beings often depicted in Shiwan ware would have appealed to the orientalist Western conception of China as a place that evoked a sense of mystery and fantasy. The designer Edward Cooke, who was helping James and Maria Bateman to create the gardens at Biddulph Grange, recorded the purchase of ‘Chinese kylins’ in his diary. This is a reference to a qilin, a type of Chinese mythological creature with a dragon’s head, a scaly body, hooves and a bushy tail. Europeans sometimes confused qilin with Buddhist lions, so NT 104566 may in fact be one of the figures that Cooke referred to as ‘kylins’. At some point this figure of a female Buddhist lion must have fallen into the pond in the ‘China’ area of the garden at Biddulph, from where it was retrieved during the restoration of the garden by the National Trust. If it did indeed originally have a male counterpart, that has not yet been found. For similar Shiwan ware Buddhist lions in National Trust collections, see NT 266575.1-4 (Basildon Park, two pairs) and NT 848675.1.1-2.2 (Ickworth, two pairs). For the significance of lions in Chinese art see Patricia Bjaaland Welch, Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery, Tokyo, Rutland (Vermont) and Singapore, Tuttle Publishing, 2008, pp.135–6. For the quote from Edward Cooke’s diary, see Peter Hayden, Biddulph Grange, Staffordshire: A Victorian Garden Rediscovered, London, George Philip in association with the National Trust, 1989, p.104.
Provenance
Probably purchased by Edward Cooke (1808–80) for James Bateman (1811–97) at the time of the creation of the garden at Biddulph Grange; acquired with the garden by the National Trust, with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and a public appeal, 1988; retrieved from the pond in the ‘China’ area of the garden during conservation and restoration work.