A RARE BAMBOO SCHOLAR'S CLIP1500 – 1750Playfully carved in the form of a naturalistic rock formation in openwork, depicting a bearded scholar clad in loose-fitting robes with his hair tied in a cloth cap, standing below a gnarled ancient pine tree with his left elbow leaning on the tree trunk, the figure, pine tree and part of the rocky ground hinged and brought up to a ninety-degree angle with the quasi-two-dimensional image, the back inscribed in running scriptXiaolu qingwanshu Shimei ke ('A pure plaything belonging to Xiaolu, carved by Shimei'), the bamboo patinated to a rich, brown tone, fitted box.10.1cm (4in) high (2).Provenance: 1500 – 1750年 竹雕松下髙仕圖文夾「小魯清玩屬石楳刻」款Provenance:Luen Chai, Hong Kong, February 1991Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, 1994來源:聯齋，香港，1991年2月倫敦Sydney L. Moss Ltd.，1994年The inscription on the present lot is likely to be later added to identify a subsequent owner, Xiaolu, who carved the additional inscription when acquiring the piece.Shimei was the zi of Zhu Jian, who was famous for inscribing and decorating pewter wine- or tea-pots during the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods. He was believed to have been the first artist to make pewter-cased Yixing pots. Xiaolu is not recorded. The carving, however, is typical of the style of Jiading (Jiangsu province, where so much of bamboo carving from the late Ming and early Qing dynasties was produced), and it is far more likely to have been made as part of the sixteenth to eighteenth century wares it resembles.The present lot is a standard part of late Ming and early Qing bamboo carvings, which is rarely found in other materials. A series of these small carvings with a hinged central section are recorded and as yet their function has not been adequately explained, although H. L. Huang of Jiansong Ge suggested they might have doubled as ink-rests whatever other purpose they might have had. Sometimes referred to as wrist rests, there seems no reason to produce a wrist rest of so small a size with a central, hinged clip when a standard wrist-rest existed and was both functional, well-established and quite different. Another suggestion is that they were the equivalent of paper-clips, made to hold gro of random jottings (a standard form of writing among scholars, where fleeting ideas were elegantly recorded on slips of paper) which remains the most likely possibility.This design of a scholar leaning against the curved trunk of a pine tree seems to have been one of the most popular for this mysterious form.pare another example, illustrated in The Art of Bamboo Carving, National Museum of History, Taipei, 1996, p.111.朱簡，字石楳，為活躍於嘉慶、道光年間的藝匠，作品有時落款「石楳」，以陶胎包錫茶壺或酒壺工藝聞名，擅雕刻及裝飾，宜興胎包錫工藝據稱乃是由他先創。 至於「小魯」的身份，則未爲人所知。 本竹雕屬典型江蘇嘉定風格，而江蘇省則是明末清初盛產竹雕之地。雖然本品落款「石楳」，但此竹雕很有可能是製於十六至十八世紀，同期亦有相近作例，銘文或為小魯入藏此器時後加。儘管此類器功用至今未明，但此器流行於明末清初則無疑問，通...