Holding the Ruyi Sceptre

Viewing notes

A viewer's written impression — not a buyer review or first-hand record

This wood-toned seated elder is the right-hand figure of a matching set of three. Hair drawn into a high topknot and a long beard falling to his chest, he sits with lowered eyes and a faint smile, holding a ruyi sceptre diagonally before him — its cloud-shaped head raised high and its patterned shaft leaning across the body, the most expansive line of the three. He wears wide-sleeved robes edged with a continuous key-fret pattern, a floral roundel carved over each knee, and a front panel of scrolling floral roundels settling in layers onto the lotus seat. Behind him rises a pointed, flame-edged aureole centred on a ring of carved petals, and the full, rounded lotus petals below carry his low, steady mass. Warm in tone and unhurried in bearing, it suits a desk-side shrine or display in a study or tea room — and taken as the right-hand close of the set, the three figures read with a fuller sense of order.