Page 61 - Bonhams Fine Chinese Art Nov 2013 London

44 This type of stand appears to have been designed to hold brushes
A rare blue and white cylindrical brush and ink holder pointing with their tips straight upwards in the circular apertures,
Wanli as illustrated in a painting depicting the famous philosopher Wang
The cylindrical body painted on the exterior with groups of Yangming (see Wen Fong, Images of the Mind, Princeton, 1984,
scholars engaged in the ‘Four Arts of the Scholar’, two admiring p.351); the rectangular aperture was intended for the ink stick.
a painting, two playing chess, one looking at a boy carrying This type of porcelain receptacle is rare and relatively few appear
a musical stone and two reading a book, all within a terraced to have been made.
garden, the top pierced with three circular and one rectangular See the 1986 exhibition at The Oriental Society of Hong Kong,
openings each separated by two ruyi-head and surrounding a Arts from the Scholar’s Studio, Catalogue, no.212, where a similar
central knop with a further circular opening. design from the Jiajing period is illustrated, and another Jiajing
14 cm (5½in) diam. mark and period example is illustrated by J.Harrison-Hall, Ming
£15,000 - 20,000 Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p.229, no.9:31
HK$190,000 - 250,000 CNY150,000 - 200,000
明萬曆 青花人物故事圖五孔筆插

Fine Chinese art | 59