The censer, 17th/18th century, of archaistic form, with later trigram-carved wood cover and carved jade "boy" finial, floriform carved wood stand; the cylindrical vase decorated with various floral and scroll bands, one with kui dragons, underside with six-character Qianlong seal mark in underglaze blue.(H: 5 1/2 in. (vase))PROVENANCE:Property from the collection of Howard G. Rhoads and Ngan Chi-kit, acquired in Guangzhou, China, between 1945 to 1951, thence by descent.Howard Rhoads graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a doctorate in English in 1934. He accepted a position teaching English at Lingnan University, Guangzhou in 1936, and married the daughter of a Chinese silk merchant the following year. As a result of the anti-Japanese war, Dr. Rhoads and his family were forced to flee several times, first to Hong Kong (where Dr. Rhoads was briefly detained in a Japanese internment camp in 1942), to northern Guangdong Province and finally to Chongqing, before returning to Guangzhou in 1945. Dr. Rhoads and his family left China for the United States in 1951, as the Korean war was heating up and Americans were no longer wee in the country.