Vintage Chinese Bronze Censer 🐉 Lidded Incense Burner, Peach & Leaf Lid, Chilong Dragon, Drum Form

Size: 6" W x 4 1/2" H including handles and lid top, 4 1/2" across

🐉 Vintage Chinese Bronze Censer — Chilong Dragon, Peach-and-Leaf Lid, Bound-Drum Form

This is a heavy little bronze incense burner with a lot going on for its size. The body is a short round drum standing on four knobbed feet, with a rope-twist handle looped through rope-twist rings on each side, as if the whole thing had been tied up and carried. On the front a raised roundel holds a coiled dragon, and the domed lid is pierced with two heart-shaped vents and topped with a peach on its stem, a long veined leaf and a curl of ribbon. Lift the lid, drop a cone or a stick of incense in the drum, and the smoke finds its way out through those two little hearts.

🍑 The Peach on the Lid

The finial is the part that tells you what the piece is wishing you. In Chinese art the peach means long life, and it comes with one of the best stories there is. The Queen Mother of the West, Xiwangmu, keeps a garden of peaches of immortality in the Kunlun Mountains. The old books say the trees bloom only once every three thousand years, and when the fruit is finally ripe the immortals gather for a banquet and eat it, and that is how they stay immortal. The story everybody knows comes from the novel Journey to the West: Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, was put in charge of the Queen Mother's peach garden and promptly ate the peaches himself, which is how the monkey became immortal and why peaches and monkeys turn up together in Chinese art to this day. So a peach on a censer is a quiet blessing on the household that lights it: may you live a very long time. The long leaf and the ribboned tendrils around it are the stem and foliage of that same fruit, laid flat across the dome.

🐲 The Dragon in the Roundel

The creature on the front is a chilong, the hornless dragon of Chinese decoration: slender, cat-headed, curled around itself with a forked tail. Lore puts the chi dragon in charge of water, which is why you find it on rooftops as a charm against fire, and it turns up as a guardian and a bringer of good luck on bronzes, jades, textiles and buildings. Here it is coiled inside a raised medallion on the side of the drum, in deep enough relief that the high points have been polished brighter by years of hands.

🥁 A Drum Tied Up in Rope

The form is a drum bound in cord. The vertical straps down the sides and the rope-twist handles running through rope-twist rings carry that idea all the way round, and the four little feet lift it off the table so it never scorches whatever it sits on. It is a clever, compact design for a burner that was meant to be picked up, moved and used, and it sits nicely on a desk, a shelf or a small altar.

📅 How Old It Is

It is a 20th-century piece, most likely from around the middle of the century. There is no mark anywhere on it, underside included: the base is plain sand-cast metal with a shallow recessed disc. The peach and the chilong are old Chinese motifs that were cast on censers for generations, so the look is traditional, and this one carries its years in a dark brown patina, in the brassy shine where the feet and rope loops have worn through, and in the pale green that has settled inside the drum.

🔎 Condition

I spent a long time with this one under bright lights, and I found one tiny flaw: a small spot on the underside of the lid that lines up with the same spot on the inside of the barrel. It does not affect the piece at all, but look at the photos and judge for yourself. Otherwise it is complete, lid and body together, all four feet and both handles in place, with the kind of wear you would expect on a burner that has been handled and used.

🎁 Who It Suits

• Anyone who burns incense and would rather do it in something with a story
• Collectors of Chinese bronzes, altar pieces and desk objects
• A long-life gift, peaches and all, for a birthday or a milestone
• A dark, heavy accent piece for a bookshelf, mantel or meditation corner

📐 The Details

• What it is: Chinese cast bronze lidded censer (incense burner), bound-drum form on four feet
• Decoration: raised chilong dragon roundel; peach, leaf and ribbon finial; two heart-shaped lid vents; rope-twist handles and rings
• Age: 20th century, most likely mid-century; unmarked
• Size: 6 x 4 1/2 inches with handles and lid, a 4 1/2 inch drum
• Surface: dark brown patina, brass tone at worn high points, pale green inside the drum