Page 123 - Bonhams Chinese Art London May 2013

88 For similar pairs of chickens which were made for a Western market
A brightly-enamelled pair of standing cockerels which appreciated their decorative qualities when further enhanced
18th/19th century with European gilt-bronze mounts, see among others, W.Sargent,
Typically modelled standing looking to the left and right, their combs The Copeland Collection, - Chinese and Japanese Ceramic figures,
white, their neck feathers iron-red, their tails sepia and coral and their Massachusetts, 1991, p.145, pl.65 for the pair in the Peabody Essex
wing feathers turquoise, black and blue, astride a pierced aubergine- Museum, Salem. The author notes that in China, the cockerel (gongji) is
washed rocky plinth. a common motif in the decorative arts, since the homophone ji provides
34.5cm (13¾in) high (2). the double meaning of ‘cockerel and fortunate’, which in turn has
£10,000 - 15,000 made the fowl an auspicious figure suggesting good fortune. Cockerels
HK$120,000 - 180,000 CNY94,000 - 140,000 of this design were made over quite a long period of time in China,
with six pairs listed in the 1777 inventory of the Chinese Pavilion at
十八/十九世紀 粉彩雕瓷公雞一對 Drottningholm. Another pair from the Copeland Collection is illustrated
by W.Sargent, op.cit., pp.144-5, pl.66. See also D.S.Howard, The Choice
of the Private Trader, p.263, pl.215, where a single brightly-coloured
famille rose model from the Hodroff Collection is illustrated, and the
author suggests that versions of this striking model have been made in
China since the 1730s.

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