Page 15 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Bajixiang Bowl
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fig. 1
Emperor Xuanzong at Leisure
Ming dynasty, handscroll, ink and colours on silk (detail)
© Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing
find it, for example, on thick-walled bowls, bowls A covered bowl of similar outline, probably made covers on red lacquer stands, a gold wine ewer,
on a tall foot, stem cups, large dishes and jars of gold, can be seen on a table laid with wine gold bottle, and a gold cup and cup stand, all
(Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/ vessels in the handscroll Emperor Xuanzong at placed in front of a table screen depicting a misty
Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Leisure from the collection of the Palace Museum, landscape.
Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Beijing, which depicts the Xuande Emperor
Taipei, 1998, cat. nos 44, 93, 116, and 184; and watching performances of various games and According to the inventory of porcelains in the
The Complete Collection of Treasures of the taking part in some of them himself (fig. 1); see National Palace Museum, Taipei, Gugong ciqi
Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Classics of the Forbidden City: Splendors from lu [Record of porcelains from the Old Palace],
Underglazed Red, Shanghai, 2000, vol. 1, pl. 107). the Yongle and Xuande Reigns of China’s Ming Taipei, 1961-6, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 119-22, the
Dynasty, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2012, pl. 92, museum possesses twenty-seven blue-and-
The elegant profile of the present model, with and the exhibition catalogue Ming. Fifty Years that white covered bowls of this form, thirteen of
the rims of both parts meeting in a harmonious Changed China, The British Museum, London, them of the present design with lotus scrolls and
outward flaring curve, is superbly calibrated, and 2014, fig. 127, pp. 144-7; the table itself is also Buddhist emblems, with minor variations in their
a precise fit of bowl and cover required expert reproduced in a line drawing in Jingdezhen chutu measurements; one of these companion bowls
craftsmanship. With its angular edge above the Ming Xuande guanyao ciqi/Xuande Imperial was included in the Museum’s Xuande exhibition,
foot and the double raised ribs just above that, Porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang op.cit., 1998, cat. no. 52 (fig. 2), together with
the shape would seem to be based on a metal Foundation, Taipei, 1998, p. 160, together with other blue-and-white covered bowls of this form
prototype. The reason that metal prototypes are another table from that painting laid with food decorated with lotus scrolls only, with ‘Indian
difficult to find, may be that they were made of vessels. Jessica Harrison-Hall states that such lotus’ (or stylized pomegranate) scrolls, and
gold or silver and have long been melted down. bowls are believed to have been used for mixing with detached flower sprays, cat. nos 50, 51 and
In China this shape is known as he wan, variously alcohol (Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, 53, as well as a blue-and-white bowl without
written with two different he characters to signify London, 2001, p. 131). The table in the painting cover painted with dragons, cat. no. 54, and
either a closed bowl or a bowl for preparing food shows besides the covered bowl one large and two covered dragon-decorated bowls painted in
or drink. two somewhat smaller golden wine jars and underglaze blue and overglaze or underglaze red,
THE EDWARD T. CHOW ‘BAJIXIANG’ BOWL 13
