Page 14 - Studio of the Clear Garden Chinese ceramics NYC Mar 2018

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A RARE LARGE MING-STYLE BLUE AND WHITE RESERVE-DECORATED
‘DRAGON’ MEIPING
18TH CENTURY
The heavily potted meiping is decorated in the Ming style with a fve-clawed dragon striding amidst clouds
and fames in pursuit of a faming pearl above a band of wind-tossed waves, all carved under the clear
glaze and reserved in white against the intense cobalt-blue ground applied with simulated ‘heaping and
piling’.
14Ω in. (36.8 cm.) high
$150,000-200,000

PROVENANCE
Christie’s London, 4 June 1973, lot 107.
Christie’s London, 7 November 2006, lot 193.
The Studio of the Clear Garden.
A closely related meiping of comparable height (36.1cm.) in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is
published by René Lefebvre d’Argencé in Chinese Ceramics in the Avery Brundage Collection, p. 114, pl.
LII C, where it is dated Ming dynasty, 15th–16th century. This meiping was later published by He Li in
Chinese Ceramics A New Comprehensive Survey, San Francisco, 1996, pp. 290-91, no. 592, where it is
re-dated to the Yongzheng period.
The white areas of the Asian Art Museum meiping have a network of crackling which may have occurred
during its rapid cooling after the fring process. The same crackling also occurs on a similar reserve-
decorated vase of this form in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Blue-and-white Ware
of the Ming Dynasty, Book I, p. 64, pl. 12. Although originally catalogued as early Ming, it most probably
also dates to the early Qing period. The Taiwan example is discussed by Soame Jenyns, T.O.C.S., vol. 31,
1957-59, ‘Visit to Pie-kou, Taiwan’, p. 56, pl. 15a.
The present meiping and the two other similar examples are clearly based on Yongle prototypes such
as the similarly decorated vase of slightly diferent shape, illustrated in the Chang Foundation exhibition
catalogue, Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Taipei, 1996, no. 66. On
this excavated Yongle-period meiping, the body of the dragon is also carved under the clear glaze and
is shown against a rich blue ground of breaking waves bordered above and below by bands of petal
lappets. On the later Yongzheng meiping, the blue wave ground has become more of a dark blue wash
and the breaking waves are confned to a band at the bottom.
清十八世紀 青花藍地白花海水雲龍紋梅瓶

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