Page 124 - Bonhams FINE CHINESE ART London November 2 2021

The five bats, wufu, are a homophone for the ‘Five Blessings’, which Notoriously difficult to achieve, copper-red glazes had been largely
are long life, wealth, health, love of virtue and a good end to one’s life. abandoned at Jingdezhen since the early Ming dynasty and were
The pattern was one of the designs on porcelain supplied to the Court revived during the Kangxi reign. Research by Peter Lam and other
listed in 1729 by Tang Ying, director of the Imperial porcelain factory leading scholars indicates that the inspiration to start using again the
active during the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns, and translated by celebrated but technically challenging pigment occurred during the
S.Bushell in Oriental Ceramic Art, London, 1981, p.198. early years of the Kangxi period under the direction of Zang Yingxuan,
who was sent to Jingdezhen in 1681 to oversee the rebuilding of the
Designs created through red-glaze silhouettes originated however in kilns and serve as Imperial supervisor. It was in these early years of the
the early Ming dynasty and are best known from the Xuande period, Qing dynasty that a series of copper-red mythical beasts appeared,
but the technique had already been developed during the preceding their abstracted rich red forms boldly contrasting with a white porcelain
Yongle reign, when silhouettes of animals and fish were used in body covered with a pale blue-tinged transparent glaze.
combination with underglaze-blue designs; for an example excavated
from the late Yongle stratum of the Ming Imperial kiln site, see Imperial
Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site
of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong, 1989,
no.38, and see also a Xuande period example recovered from the
Xuande stratum of the Ming Imperial kiln site at Jingdezhen and
included in Xuande Imperial Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, T
aipei, 1998, nos.101-102.

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