Page 152 - Chinese Works of Art Chritie's Mar. 22-23 2018

PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT AMERICAN COLLECTOR
821
A RARE SMALL GILT AND IRON-RED-DECORATED BLUE AND WHITE
‘DRAGON’ MOON FLASK
QIANLONG FOUR-CHARACTER SEAL MARK IN IRON RED AND OF THE PERIOD (1736-1795)
Each side is decorated in iron red with a fve-clawed dragon leaping amidst gilt-highlighted blue clouds
which rise from the foot where they frame iron-red bats and continue onto the ‘garlic’ neck which is
decorated on two sides with a shou character and fanked by a pair of blue ruyi scepter handles. The
interior of the neck and the base surrounding the mark is covered in turquoise enamel.
7Ω in. (19 cm.) high
$80,000-120,000

PROVENANCE
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 9 October 2012, lot 3105.

Compare the slightly larger (29 cm. high) Qianlong-marked blue and white rouge-red overglaze enamel
moon fask in the Qing Court Collection illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace
Museum - 36 - Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), Hong Kong, 2000, p. 254 no. 232.
Similar to the present moon fask, the Qing Court Collection moon fask is decorated with a front-faced
dragon amdist dense scrolling clouds and bats.
Flattened porcelain fasks with compressed bulb mouths and strap handles appear among Chinese
porcelains in the early 15th century. An early 15th-century blue and white example with Islamic-inspired
lattice decoration is in the collection of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, and is published
by R. Scott in Elegant Form and Harmonious Decoration, Percival David Foundation, London, 1992, p. 39,
no. 26.

This form was revived in the 18th century, and in the case of a Yongzheng blue and white moon fask in
the Palace Museum, Beijing, the same lattice decoration was applied (see The Complete Collection of
Treasures of the Palace Museum - 36 - Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (III), Commercial
Press, Hong Kong, 2000, p. 113, no. 99). In other cases, like the underglaze-red Qianlong fask in the
Baur Collection, they were decorated with an adaptation of the early design (see J. Ayers, The Baur
Collection Geneva, Chinese Ceramics, vol. 4, Collections Baur, Genève, 1974, no. A535).
清乾隆 青花礬紅描金雲龍紋如意耳小抱月瓶 礬紅四字篆書款

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