Page 88 - Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art II

VARIOUS PROPERTIES
2234
A RARE MING-STYLE YELLOW-GROUND BLUE AND WHITE CONICAL BOWL
QIANLONG SIX-CHARACTER SEAL MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND OF THE PERIOD (1736-1795)

Of conical form, the bowl is strongly potted with wide faring sides rising from a spreading
foot to an everted rim. The interior is delicately painted with a central medallion enclosing
a leafy spray of chrysanthemum, surrounded by six evenly spaced foral sprays in the cavetto,
which are lotus, mallow, camelia, chrysanthemum, gardenia, and hibiscus, below a narrow
band of foral sprigs at rim. The exterior is similarly painted, with a thin band of key fret to the
underside of the everted rim and a band of cloud scroll encircling the foot, all against a bright
lemon-yellow enamel ground, continuing onto the base around the underglaze-blue mark,
save for the exterior of the foot covered with a green enamel.
10º in. (26 cm.) diam., Japanese wood box

$150,000-200,000

The shape of this bowl and the design in underglaze blue comprised of varying foral sprays are
inspired by a Xuande prototype, such as the example in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated
in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty,
Taipei, 1998, pp. 178-9, no. 62. The addition of a yellow enamel ground to this design and shape was
an innovation of the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen during the Yongzheng period. In his Taocheng jishi,
‘Account of Porcelain Achievement’, compiled in 1735, Tang Ying includes a list of ffty-seven types of
wares supplied to the court, one of which was described as ‘Xuande-style design on yellow ground’,
and noted to be a newly developed category of the period.
Similar Qianlong-marked bowls are found in the Qing Court Collection and international museums.
The National Palace Museum, Taipei, has nine examples listed on the online archive, museum
numbers: zhongci 003353N-003361N. Another example is in the Baur Foundation, illustrated by
J. Ayers in The Baur Collection Geneva, vol. IV, Geneva, 1974, no. A584; another in the Nanjing
Museum, included in the exhibition catalogue Qing Imperial Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1995, no. 79, and
again illustrated in The Offcial Kiln Porcelain of the Chinese Qing Dynasty, Shanghai, 2003, p. 216.

清乾隆 黃地青花花卉紋折沿盌 六字篆書款

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