Page 196 - Sotheby's Speelman Collection Oct. 3, 2018

3453

A RARE PALE CELADON JADE 元 青白玉螭龍耳瓜棱式盃

LOBED ‘CHILONG’ CUP
YUAN DYNASTY

the oval cup divided into six vertical lobes raised on a short
straight footring, set to one side with a crouching dragon
forming the handle, the stone of a very pale green tone with
faint speckled black, white and russet inclusions
w. 11.4 cm, 4½ in.

HK$ 600,000-800,000
US$ 76,500-102,000

This exceptional jade cup displays influences from both Tang
dynasty metalware and Song to Yuan dynasty porcelain. The
unusual lobed form was likely influenced by Tang dynasty gold
and silver bowls, which were made in imitation of Sassanian
prototypes. See Jessica Rawson, ‘Chinese Silver and its
Western Origins’, Connoisseur, September 1977, p. 37, where
a lobed cup from the Tang dynasty in the collection of the
British Museum is illustrated, pl. 1, together with a Sassanian-
type parcel-gilt silver cup from the State Hermitage Museum,
St Petersburg, pl. 2. See also a parcel-gilt silver stembowl of
elongated quatrelobed form from the collection of Carl Kempe
sold in our London rooms, 14th May 2008, lot. 51. The form
appears to have been adapted into jade vessels as early as the
Tang dynasty, as evidenced by a contemporaneous oval bowl
divided into eight lobes in the British Museum illustrated by
Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing,
London, 1995, pl. 29:1.
Cups with dragon handles appear in Qingbai porcelain of
the Song and Yuan dynasties, and appear to have been
produced concurrently with their jade counterparts into the
Ming dynasty. For qingbai porcelain examples from the Yuan
dynasty, see one from the Barlow collection and another from
the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, included in Stacey
Pierson, ed., Qingbai Ware: Chinese Porcelain of the Song and
Yuan Dynasties, London, 2002, pls 41 and 42.
Compare also a lobed jade cup with a dragon handle, with
carved decoration to the sides, dated to the Song dynasty,
from the Qing court collection, illustrated in The Complete
Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Jadeware (II),
Hong Kong, 1995, pl. 111; and a circular libation cup with a
chilong handle dated to the Yuan to early Ming dynasty, in the
collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, see Wen C.
Fong and James C.Y. Watt, Possessing the Past, The National
Palace Museum, Taipei, 1996, pl. 18.

194 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比