Page 33 - 2020 September 22 Kangxi Porcelain Asia Week NYC

9/2/2020 Kangxi Porcelain – A Private Collection | Sotheby's

Zhongguo mingtao riben xunhui zhan. Gangtai mingjia shoucang taoci jingpin [Exhibition of Famous Chinese Ceramics Touring
Japan. Fine Ceramics from Private Hong Kong and Taiwanese Collections], Nihonbashi Takashimaya, Tokyo, 1992, p. 17.

展覽
《求知雅集珍藏•中國古陶瓷展》，香港中文大學文物館，香港，1981年，編號133
《中國名陶日本巡迴展•港台名家收藏陶瓷精品》，日本橋高島屋，東京，1992年，頁17

Catalogue Note
Deceptively understated in design and form, this rare vase highlights the technical advances made in the Kangxi reign by
combining tradition with innovation. Aware of the progress made in ceramic production and design in the West via Jesuit
missionaries at court, the emperor sought to reinstate the glory of Chinese porcelain production by engaging his most resourceful
and skilled artisans while remaining rooted in the traditional literati aesthetic. The present vase exemplifies this aim: the favored
dragon motif is combined with an updated iteration of the celebrated celadon glaze, on a form new to the Chinese potters'
repertoire.

The form of this vase is a variation of the ‘three-string vase’ (sanxuanzun), which comprises one of the eight prescribed
peachbloom vessels. Vases of this form and design are likely to have been produced when the artist Liu Yuan (c. 1638-c. 1685) was
designing for the imperial kilns. In his research on Qing imperial porcelain, Peter Y.K. Lam has highlighted the importance of this
artist for porcelain decoration of the Kangxi period, and has shown that the image of a dragon emerging from clouds or waves, as
seen on the present vase, was a distinctive Liu Yuan design. Furthermore, Lam has convincingly argued that the various wares with
peachbloom glazes were created during this period early in the Kangxi reign. One of the few distinctive shapes produced with a
peachbloom glaze is this sanxianping (‘three-string’) or laifuping (‘radish’) vase form, which was an innovation of the time.

Closely related examples include two vases in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Gugong Bowuyuan cang Qingdai yuyao
ciqi [Qing porcelains from the Imperial kilns preserved in the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2005, vol. I, book 1, pls 112 and 113; one in
the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, published in S.W. Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art Illustrated by Examples from the Collection of
W.T. Walters, London, [1896] 1981, col. pl. VII; another, from the Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 3rd
November 1996, lot 566; and a fifth example sold in these rooms, 16th-17th September 2014, lot 156. See also a vase of this type,
from the Widener Collection in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., illustrated in Virginia Bower, The Collections of the
National Gallery of Art. Systematic Catalogue: Decorative Arts, pt. II, Washington D.C., 1998, p. 102 (center), where it is noted that
the ‘slight differences in the modeling of the appliqued dragons suggest that the dragons were individually sculpted and not
molded’ (p. 103).

See also a similar vase, from the collection of Mrs. William H. Moore in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, included in the
exhibition The Communion of Scholars. Chinese Art at Yale, China House Gallery, China Institute in America, New York, 1982, cat.
no. 35; one (mistakenly identified as having a ‘clair-de-lune’ glaze) illustrated in René-Yvon Lefebvre d’Argencé, Chinese Ceramics
in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1967, pl. LXIV C; and another sold in our Hong Kong rooms 23rd October 2005, lot
368, and again at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29th May 2009, lot 1819.

Vases of this type were also produced with the dragon depicted in copper red on a white ground leaping from carved waves; see
one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from the collection of Mary Clark Thompson, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics.
The World’s Great Collections, vol. 11, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 118, together with a Yongzheng version of this design, where the waves and
scrolling clouds are not carved but also painted in copper red, col. pl. 30, from the Friedsam Collection.

For peachbloom-glazed Kangxi mark and period vases of this type, see an example in the Palace Museum, Beijing, published
in Kangxi. Yongzheng. Qianlong. Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 137, pl. 120; and another,
from the Meiyintang Collection, illustrated as part of a complete group of eight peachbloom wares for the scholar’s desk, in Regina
Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, p. 328.

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