Page 109 - Bonhams UK Marsh Collection Art for the Literati November 2, 2022

The depiction of antiques and flowers, as
seen on the present lot, a design sometimes
known as bogu or 'various antiquities'
reflected the growing scholarly interest of the
literati in collecting antiques, works of art and
flowers. In the late 16th century, the writer
Fan Chao from Songjiang pondered on his
contemporaries who sought to emulate the
lifetsyle of the scholar class:

The particularly strange thing is that even
officials' lictors and runners...would set up a
small place...with a goldfish and various pots
of flowers in the courtyard. with a hardwood
table and a flywhisk, and call it a 'study'. I
have no idea what books officials' lictors and
runner studied.
Nevertheless, during the late Ming dynasty,
when urban populations, literacy and the
merchant class with access to education and
positions at court expanded, the collecting
of artefacts and their pictorial record became
increasingly popular. See also a woodblock
print of the various antiquities and flowers,
early Qing dynasty, illustrated by C.Von Spee,
The Printed Image in China: from the 8th
to the 21st centuries, London, 2010, p.91,
no.29.

Compare with a similar blue and white vase,
Shunzhi, also decorated with flowers and
the Hundred Antiques and of similar height
(20.4cm high), in the Palace Museum, Beijing,
illustrated by T.Canepa and K.Butler, Leaping
The Dragon Gate: The Sir Michael Butler
Collection of Seventeenth-Century Chinese
Porcelain, London, 2021, p.449.

(two views)

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