Page 202 - Sotheby's Fine Chinese Art NYC September 2023

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PROPERTY FROM AN ASIAN PRIVATE COLLECTION Comparable examples to the current jar are rare. There
A RARE WUCAI ‘MYTHICAL BEAST’ CHESS JAR are two slightly shorter boxes from the Iver Munthe Daae
MARK AND PERIOD OF WANLI Collection: one, now in the Oslo Kunstindustrimuseet,
illustrated in Johanne Huitfeldt, Porselenet fra Kina, Oslo,
the base with a six-character mark in underglaze blue within 1978, p. 80; the other sold in our Hong Kong rooms,
a double circle, Japanese wood cover, stand, and box (5) 1st-2nd November 1994, lot 54, and illustrated in Sotheby’s.
Diameter 5⅝ in., 14.5cm. Thirty Years in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2003, pl. 176. See
also a jar complete with its cover sold in our Hong Kong
PROVENANCE
rooms, 5th October 2016, lot 110, from the collection of a
Japanese Private Collection. Paris connoisseur.
This rare box is brilliantly enamelled in wucai with a vibrant ⊖ $ 80,000-120,000
scene of auspicious beasts including qilin. The usage of
these drum-shaped boxes is still not fully understood. While
some were probably made as cricket cages, related boxes, 明萬曆 五彩瑞獸紋罐
also extremely rare, may have been used by the Wanli 《大明萬曆年製》款
emperor as containers for chess pieces (often known by its
Japanese name go). In Japan, this form was later valued as
mizusashi or water jars for the tea ceremony, a likely usage 來源
for the current box. 日本私人收藏
These drum-shaped boxes are often interpreted as chess
jars. For example, Lu Minghua proposes this for a box in
the Shanghai Museum, decorated with dragons chasing
flaming pearls amongst clouds and above mountains and
waves, illustrated in Lu Minghua, Shanghai Bowuguan
cangpin yanjiu daxi / Studies of the Shanghai Museum
Collections: A Series of Monographs. Mingdai guanyao ciqi
[Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 3-104, and
cites from Veritable Records of the Ming Shenzong Emperor
a list of a variety of porcelains urgently required by the Wanli
Emperor in the 12th year of his reign (1584), including chess
pieces, chess jars, brush handles, and various other types
of boxes. Another record in the Gazetter of Jiangxi Province
lists many imperial porcelains made for the Wanli Emperor
in the 11th year of his reign, including chess boards with
dragon and clouds in wucai, as well as chess pieces with
dragon design in underglaze blue, see Wang Guangyao,
Ming dai gongting taoci shi [A history of ceramics for the
Ming dynasty court], Beijing, 2010, p. 93. The polychrome
dragon box in Shanghai may therefore represent a chess jar,
having formed a set with the chess boards and chess pieces
of similar decoration listed in the above record. The same
may apply to a companion box missing the cover, illustrated
in Suzanne Valenstein, The Herzman Collection of Chinese
Ceramics, New York, 1992, pl. 85, now in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.

400 SOTHEBY’S COMPLETE CATALOGUING AVAILABLE AT SOTHEBYS.COM/N11275 401