Page 103 - Christies IMportant Chinese Art Sept 26 2020 NYC

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF LENORA AND
WALTER F. BROWN
1557
A RARE BLUE AND WHITE GU-FORM VASE
WANLI PERIOD (1573-1619)
The tall, flared neck is decorated in underglaze
cobalt blue with birds, flowers, and insects above the
bulbous mid-section pierced on either side with a
taotie mask reserved on a leiwen ground, above the
foot which is pierced with auspicious emblems above
a ruyi border.
13√ in. (35.2 cm.) diam., cloth box
$20,000-30,000
PROVENANCE:
Sotheby's New York, 4 June 1985, lot 165.
The Lenora and Walter F. Brown Collection, San
Antonio, Texas.
The present vase is a very unusual shape in the
repertoire of vessels created during the Wanli
period. More common forms produced include
double-gourd vases, bottle vases including versions
with garlic-form mouths, flasks of square section,
elephant and frog-form kendis, as well as large-scale
gu-form vases.
The technique of piercing the walls of a vessel to
create a delicate openwork design was known by
the Chinese as ling long or 'delicate openwork’, and
is rare to find on a vase from this time period. These
openwork designs would have been cut by hand
when the clay was 'leather hard'. Both the cutting
and subsequent firing would have required great
skill. During this Wanli period this technique can
be found on fully reticulated bowls, such as those
illustrated by M. Medley in Illustrated Catalogue
of Underglaze Blue and Copper Red Decorated
Porcelains in the Percival David Foundation of
Chinese Art, London, 1976, plate XI, nos. B620
and B623, listed p. 57, and Chen Runmin, Selected
Chinese Ceramics from the Palace Museum (Volume
1): Blue and White Ceramics in Shunzhi and Kangxi
Periods (Qing Shunzhi Kangxi chao qing hua ci),
Beijing, 2005, p. 203, no. 124. The workmanship
on the present vase is slightly more involved, as the
vase has an inner wall, and the openwork only goes
through the outer wall.

明萬曆 青花仿古鏤空饕餮紋出戟觚式瓶