“Rose-water Upon His Delicate Hands”

The entry in the Museum Register of September 25, 1884 pays only the briefest attention to the provenance of the ewer, in either its pre-1860 imperial or post-1860 imperialist iterations. This chapter examines some of the dominant readings of the Hope Grant Ewer arose out of a moment of curatorial anxiety that occurred in 2011. The entry for the Hope Grant Ewer focuses on form, and to a lesser degree function, describing the ewer's purpose as a rose-water jug. The ewer was undoubtedly on display before 1908, and may even have been on public display in Edinburgh before its accession to the Museum in 1884. During the same period in which the ewer sat on display between 1996 and 2008, apparently unremarked in terms of its provenance, the legacy of the Yuanmingyuan suddenly re-emerged into sharp relief on the international stage.