Page 136 - Imperial Sale Chinese Works of Art June 1 2016 HK

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR The iconography of this bowl has been chosen with care to provide
auspicious messages. On the top of each handle is a butterfly,
3253 symbolising blessings, happiness, wealth and longevity. The term for
butterfly is hudie in Chinese. Hu is pronounced Fu in some Chinese
A SUPERBLY CARVED PALE CELADON JADE dialects and thus provides a homophone for two words with that
MARRIAGE BOWL pronunciation - one meaning blessings and one meaning riches. Die is
a homophone for a word meaning ‘age of seventy to eighty’, and thus
QIANLONG PERIOD (1736-1795) stands for longevity, and also sounds like a word meaning duplicate,
accumulate or pile up. When two butterflies face each other, as they
The large bowl is finely carved in deep relief to the interior with do on the handles of this bowl, they suggest a ‘joyful encounter’, but
a large central hibiscus bloom borne on undulating stems bearing also symbolise marital happiness. The flowers carved to the interior of
four further blooms around the cavetto. The exterior is crisply the bowl seem, by virtue of what appear to be the extended pistil and
carved with a dense arrangement of lotus meander and flanked on stamens in the centre of the flower, to be hibiscus blossoms. Hibiscus
both sides with a pair of loop-handles modelled as butterflies with are called mufurong in Chinese and therefore provide a rebus both for
wings outstretched spanning the rim of the bowl and hanging Fu meaning wealth, and rong meaning glory.
loose rings. The well-polished semi-translucent stone is of a
greenish white tone. Compare two white jade marriage bowls displaying equally deep
9 √ in. (25.1 cm.) wide carving to the interior; the first included in the Oriental Ceramic
Society exhibition Jade Throughout the Ages, Victoria and Albert
HK$1,800,000-2,500,000 US$240,000-320,000 Museum, London, 1975, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 425; the
second in the British Royal Collections, illustrated by C. Nott, Chinese
清乾隆 青白玉雕蓮紋雙活環蝠耳洗 Jade Throughout the Ages, pl. CXXIX.

PROVENANCE

Ashkenazi & Co., San Francisco, acquired in 1980

來源
Ashkenazi & Co., 三藩市，購於1980年

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