Page 216 - Sotheby's Speelman Collection Oct. 3, 2018

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A RARE WHITE JADE-INSET 清十八世紀

GILT-SILVER ‘DRAGON AND 鎏金銀嵌白玉福壽龍鳳蓋壺
PHOENIX’ EWER AND COVER 《乾隆年製》仿款

QING DYNASTY, 18TH
CENTURY

modelled with a circular body of flattened form, supported
on a splayed foot and surmounted by a tapering neck and
galleried mouth-rim, flanked by a handle modelled in the
form of a dragon’s head at the top and ending with an
upturned tail, opposite a spout cast as a phoenix with its beak
forming the aperture and plumage elaborately rendered in
scrollwork, each main side of the vessel inset with a convex
oval white jade panel, one side worked in low relief with two
large peaches borne on gnarled leafy branches and further
rendered with two bats, the other similarly rendered with a
partially concealed bat and a floral bloom issuing from a stem,
the base with an apocryphal four-character Qianlong mark,
the oval cover similarly inset with a pierced white jade panel
adorned with a pair of kui dragons, encircling a gilt finial cast
with petal motifs
l. 25.1 cm, 9⅞ in.
HK$ 2,500,000-3,000,000
US$ 319,000-383,000

This unusual ewer is rare for the jade plaques inset in a metal dynasty, excavated in 1976 at Changyi, Xinjian county, now
body. While the opulence of the piece is firmly representative in the Jiangxi Museum, Jiangxi, illustrated in Zhongguo chutu
of the Qing period, its flattened form is rooted in archaic ciqi quanji/Complete Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed
bronze ewers (he) of the Eastern Zhou period (770-256 BC). in China, Beijing, 2008, vol. 14, pl. 78; and a Yuan blue and
These bronze prototypes were often cast with zoomorphic white flask with a phoenix head spout, the body painted on
features, surmounted on four legs, such as one on the the flattened circular body, illustrated in Yuan dai qinghua
Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park, Warwickshire, coll. no. ci [Yuan blue and white wares], Shanghai, 2000, pl. 66.
CVCSV 0230.1-2A; and another sold at Christie’s London, Compare also two gold-embellished silver teapots of globular
10th November 2015, lot 24. Globular tripod ewers with bird- form, the handle in the form of a dragon and the spout issuing
shaped spouts and overhead handles were also produced; from the head of a mythical creature, one from the Palace
see one attributed to the Warring States period (475-221 BC), Museum, Beijing, included in Zhongguo jin yin boli falangqi
published in Jenny So, Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the quanji [The complete collection of Chinese gold, silver, glass
Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. III, New York, 1995, pl. 84. and enamelled wares], Shijiazhuang, 2004, pl. 344, and the
other in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the
Ewers of this type continued to be created through to the Qing
dynasty in various media; for example see a qingbai version Museum’s exhibition The Far-Reaching Fragrance of Tea. The
with a stylised dragon spout, attributed to the Southern Song Art and Culture of Tea in Asia, Taipei, 2015, cat. no. I-77.

214 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比