Page 418 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Chinese Art

3740
A WHITE JADE ‘TWIN FISH’ BOWL
AND COVER
QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY
worked from one single boulder, the bowl with
deep rounded sides supported on four ruyi-
shaped feet, carved in low relief to the exterior
with four pairs of addorsed catfish, their sinuous
curving bodies detailed with stylised scrolls,
with a ruyi and a lozenge motif between their
heads and tails respectively, the domed cover
similarly decorated with four stylised floral motifs territories of Khotan and Yarkand, areas opened
formed from a canopy below formalised scrolls,
surmounted by a domed knop with a hollowed
centre encircled by radiating lappets and a ruyi
band rim, the stone of an even white tone with
minor mottling
14.6 cm, 5¾ in.
HK$ 900,000-1,200,000
US$ 116,000-154,000
清十八世紀 白玉萬年有餘蓋奩
416 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比
This piece is remarkable for the even luminous
tone of the stone, which has been accentuated
through the exquisite carving and lustruous finish
of the surface. By restricting the carved design
on the body to the four twin fish, the carver draws
attention to the high quality of the stone. Bowls
of this form, complete with their matching covers
are rare and required to be fashioned from stones
of large size to allow for the cover to be created
from the same boulder, as in this case. Such
large jade boulders originated in the jade-rich
only after the Qing army’s conquest of the north-
western territories in the eighteenth century. The
Qianlong Emperor himself frequently praised
the qualities of the jades from Khotan in poems
incised on specific jade vessels.
Jade bowls carved with this auspicious motif
of two catfish and lingzhi, which represents the
wish niannian ruyi (‘May your wishes come true
year after year’), are rare and no other closely
related example appears to have been published.
Compare a bowl and cover of similar form but
carved with dragons illustrated in Robert Kleiner,
Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and
Simone Hartman, Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 79.