Page 128 - Sothebys Speelman Gems of Chinese Art

fig. 1
Cloisonné enamel ‘lotus’ jar, Ming dynasty, Yongle – Xuande
period
Sotheby’s London, 2nd July 1968, lot 48.
Uldry Collection
圖一
明永樂至宣德 掐絲琺瑯纏枝蓮八吉祥藏草瓶
倫敦蘇富比1968年7月2日，編號48
烏德瑞典藏

The designs on these two vases are conceived in an unusually jinghua/Treasures from Snow Mountains. Gems of Tibetan
intricate, baroque style and executed in a particularly lavish Cultural Relics, the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, 2001, cat.
technique. Extremely rare is the employment of the enamel no. 90, where it is described as “most probably a gift granted
colours to achieve the quasi-naturalism of depicting the lotus by the imperial court”.
with colourful blooms and buds among green foliage and
Such careful craftsmanship is rarely found, even on other fine
stems; this is pushed even further when several colours are
early Ming pieces made for use in a Buddhist context, such
combined in a single cloison, or cell, to depict green leaves
as, for example, two important incense burners, one from the
whose tips have turned red or yellow. The wires are used as if
collections of Mrs M.J. Shepherd and Frederick Knight, now
in a drawing, not only outlining and enclosing the colours, but
in the Uldry collection, illustrated in Brinker & Lutz, op.cit.,
also delineating detail within monochrome cells.
col. pl. 15, and sold in our London rooms, 15th June 1982, lot
All six lotus blooms are different, composed of variously 129; the other from the Kitson collection, illustrated in Garner,
rendered and coloured petals. Similarly complex lotus flowers op.cit., pl. 17A and sold in our London rooms, 18th October
can be seen, for example, on a kundika sold in our London 1960, lot 105; and much simpler petal panels are seen, for
rooms, 7th June 1994, lot 63, but not on a second, otherwise example, on a disc and two boxes of Xuande mark and period,
very similar early Ming kundika from the Kitson collection, sold as well as the knob of the famous Xuande jar, all from the
in our London rooms, 18th October 1960, lot 104 and now in Uldry collection and illustrated in Brinker & Lutz, op.cit., pls 1,
the British Museum, London, illustrated in Jessica Rawson, 2, 4 and 5.
ed., The British Museum Book of Chinese Art, London, 1992,
The development and gradual simplification of the lotus flower
pl. 140.
design after the early fifteenth century is graphically illustrated
The petal panels, which are composed of about a dozen in line drawings in Brinker and Lutz, op.cit. p. 59, and can
differently shaped elements distinguished by colour, with easily be traced, when comparing later vessels with similar
four different colour schemes alternating, are even more lotus scrolls in the Uldry collection, for example, a censer of
complicated in their composition than those that appear on the second half of the fifteenth century, ibid., col. pl. 27, a
a monk’s cap ewer in the Tibet Museum, Lhasa, one of the covered jar of the first half of the sixteenth century, col. pl. 44;
finest early Ming Buddhist cloisonné vessels preserved, that a vase of the first half of the seventeenth century, col. pl. 124,
was included in the exhibiton Xueyu cangzhen. Xizang wenwu or a kendi of Qianlong mark and period (1736-1795), pl. 253.

126 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比