Of mottled greyish-celadon stone, the wood stand carved with flowers, lingzhi and rockwork.(H: 5 in. (including stand))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.