Page 23 - Sothebys Imperial Falancai Bowl Kangxi Hong Kong

Most extraordinary of all design In the West, Kangxi falangcai pieces had at least since the
Royal Academy of Arts exhibition in London, 1935-1936, when
elements on our bowl, however, are the the Chinese Government sent several examples, including the
small blue asters in the pendentives companion bowl now in Taipei, been recognised for what they
between the windows, depicted are. In the 1960s and ‘70s, however, several scholars doubted
them, since they seemed far too advanced to be accepted
dramatically foreshortened, like the as dating from the Kangxi period. In 1976, for example,
‘prunus’ windows themselves, as if the Margaret Medley wrote in The Chinese Potter (Oxford, 1976,
painter wanted to prompt us to pick p. 249) “Neither technically nor stylistically can these have
appeared as early as the K’ang-hsi period, and it seems likely
up the bowl and turn it, so as to better that the earliest date to which they can be assigned with
appreciate the full design. any confidence is the very end of the eighteenth century.”
It was publications by the National Palace Museum, Taipei,
such as Ts’ai Ho-pi’s exhibition catalogue “Qing Kang, Yong,
also inscribed with a deep pink Kangxi yuzhi mark, illustrated, Qian ming ci/Catalog of the Special Exhibition of K’ang-hsi,
for example, in Shenbi danqing, op.cit., cat. no. I-14, where Yu Yung-cheng and Ch’ien-lung Porcelain Ware from the Ch’ing
Pei-chin writes “it reminds one of the possibility that Western Dynasty in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1986, that
missionary-artists took part in painting painted enamelware dispelled all doubts once more and truly opened our eyes to
at the time.” Also worth comparing among the trial pieces is a the beauty and quality of Kangxi falangcai porcelains.
bowl of similar shallow form with a purple ground that seems
to be slightly misfired, illustrated in Shi Jingfei, Feng Mingzhu With their Western stylistic
& Xie Zhenhong, Ri yue guanghua: Qing gong hua falang/
Radiant Luminance: The Painted Enamelware of the Qing components, their original manner
Imperial Court, Taipei, 2012, pl. 15, illustrated together with of decoration, and their pink reign
the white-ground bowl mentioned above, pl. 16, and together marks, they most likely belong to the
with an enamelled copper bowl with a flower design on an
uneven purple ground, pl. 17. early porcelains painted in the Kangxi
Gold-ruby or gold-pink enamel were rarely used as a ground workshops, conceived before a certain
colour for enamelled copper or for glass; only one rare degree of standardization set in...
enamelled glass cup of Kangxi mark and period, formerly in
the collection of Barbara Hutton, is enamelled with flower
roundels on a gold-ruby ground; it is illustrated in Hugh Moss, Henry M. Knight was a most discriminating collector who
By Imperial Command: An Introduction to Ch’ing Imperial from 1930 practically until his death in 1971 assembled a
Painted Enamels, Hong Kong, 1976, pl. 33, and was sold in major collection of Chinese ceramics and other works of art,
our London rooms, 6th July 1971, lot 384, and in these rooms, focussing mainly on Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911)
19th May 1982, lot 384, and again 15th November 1989, lot porcelains, buying largely from Bluett & Sons, London. Roger
557. Bluett wrote about him: “Henry Knight, who built up perhaps
the best collection of eighteenth-century porcelains in Europe
Only one other piece of porcelain enamelled with the same or
as well as magnificent early pieces, was fond of telling how
a similar gold-pink ground appears to be recorded, but painted
it was my late father who told him to buy ‘Chinese taste’
with a formal flower pattern and inscribed with a blue enamel
porcelains. Their time would come, my father used to say, and
Kangxi mark: the bowl from the collection of Sir Percival
how right he was.” 5
David, later in the British Rail Pension Fund and then in the
Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, sold in our London rooms,
5th December 1961, lot 39, and 12th/13th May 1976, lot 363, 1 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical
and in these rooms, 16th May 1989, lot 85; and illustrated in Technology, part II: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Magisteries of Gold and
Immortality, Cambridge, 1974, p. 70 and pp. 257-66.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong – Twenty Years, 1973-1993, Hong Kong, 2 Shih Ching-fei, ‘A Record of the Establishment of a New Art Form: The Unique Collection
1993, pl. 214. of “Painted Enamels” at the Qing Court’, Collections and Concepts, vol. 7, 2005, pp. 5-6.
3 George Loehr, ‘Missionary-Artists at the Manchu Court’, Transactions of the Oriental
It is interesting that gold itself was rarely used as a ground Ceramic Society, vol. 34, 1962-63, p. 55.
colour of porcelains, although two falangcai bowls with a gold 4 Loehr, op.cit., p. 51.
ground are preserved in the Baur Collection, Geneva, both 5 Roy Davids and Dominic Jellinek, Provenance. Collectors, Dealers and Scholars: Chinese
Ceramics in Britain and America, Great Haseley, 2011, p. 276, quoting Arts of Asia, vol.
painted with a formal flower design, see John Ayers, Chinese 10, no. 6, 1980.
Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Geneva, 1999, vol. 2, pls 162
and 164.