Page 36 - Sotheby's May 10th 2017 London Important Chinese Art

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT ASIAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
The beautiful, rich red glaze of this dish cannot be better
described than with the somewhat over-used term ‘crushed
strawberries’. Monochrome copper-red glazes were perfected
during the Yongle (1403-1424) and Xuande (1426-1435) reigns,
but the large number of discarded sherds at the Jingdezhen
kiln sites impressively highlights the di culties experienced by of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 168, together with
even the highly accomplished imperial potters of that time to
achieve satisfactory results. After the Xuande reign, the copper no. 170, and a third of similar size, also with incised reign mark
pigment was therefore almost completely abandoned until
it was revived on a grand scale, but never again to similarly
striking results, in the Kangxi period (1662-1722) of the Qing
dynasty (1644-1911).
While copper began to be used at the Jingdezhen porcelain
manufactories in the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and was
experimented with throughout the Hongwu reign (1368-1398),
it was only in the Yongle period that a satisfactory bright red
began to be achieved after many adjustments of glaze recipes,
ring conditions and temperatures; but as Nigel Wood states
(Chinese Glazes. Their Origins, Chemistry and Recreation,
London, 1999, p. 178), “When we come to examine Xuande (AD
1426-1435) copper-red porcelains from Jingdezhen we are at
the very peak of Chinese copper-red porcelain production.”
While both the Yongle and Xuande strata of the waste heaps
of the imperial kiln site have brought to light many examples
of copper-red pieces that did not meet the high standards of
quality control, extant heirloom examples of either period are
extremely rare; for discarded copper-red vessels of the Yongle
and Xuande reigns, the latter mostly with incised reign marks,
see Jingdezhen chutu Mingdai yuyao ciqi [Porcelains from the
Ming imperial kilns excavated at Jingdezhen], Beijing, 2009,
cat. nos. 18-30 and 44-9, where heaps of copper-red sherds
are illustrated, p. 14, gs. 9 and 10.
Two discarded copper-red glazed dishes with underglaze-
blue Xuande marks and of the period, one with a ne, deep
red glaze on the inside, but a broad area at the rim remaining
white on the outside, the other with a mottled greyish red on
the outside, were included in the exhibition Imperial Porcelain
of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site
of the Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen, Hong Kong
Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1989, cat. nos 69 and 70. Two
other red dishes with blue Xuande marks and of the period,
also discarded at the kiln site, one perhaps red somewhat
too dark, the other somewhat too pale, were included in the
exhibition Jingdezhen chutu Yuan Ming guanyao ciqi/Yuan’s
and Ming’s Imperial Porcelain Unearthed from Jingdezhen, Yan-
Huang Art Museum, Beijing, 1999, cat. nos. 227 and 228.
34 SOTHEBY’S
A successfully red copper-red heirloom dish of similar shape,
mark and size as the present piece, in the National Palace
Museum, Taiwan, was included in the Museum’s exhibition
Mingdai Xuande guanyao jinghua tezhan tulu/Catalogue of the
Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains
another of slightly smaller size, with incised reign mark, cat.
and left white inside, cat. no. 169. A similar, slightly larger
dish in the National Museum of China, Beijing, is illustrated in
Zhongguo Guojia Bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu congshu/
Studies on the Collections of the National Museum of China.
Ciqi juan [Porcelain section], vol. 1: Mingdai [Ming dynasty],
Shanghai, 2007, pl. 47. Three copper-red dishes of this form,
of Xuande mark and period are preserved in the Shanghai
Museum, one slightly larger, two of similar size, but one of the
latter with the reign mark incised; see Lu Minghua, Shanghai
Bowuguan zangpin yanjiu daxi/Studies of the Shanghai
Museum Collections : A Series of Monographs. Mingdai
guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pls
3-42, 3-43, and 3-44; Lu also publishes a modern copy of a
red Xuande dish, pl. 5-30; another dish of this type and size
in the Tianjin Municipal Museum is illustrated in Tianjin Shi
Yishu Bowuguan cang ci/Porcelains from the Tianjin Municipal
Museum, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 80.
A similar dish was twice sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1st
October 1991, lot 764 and 11th June 1996, lot 29; and one from
the Wu Lai Hsi collection, perhaps the same as the present
dish or as the latter piece, was sold, unillustrated, in these
rooms, 26th May 1937, lot 82; a slightly smaller one was sold in
these rooms, 24th July 1968, lot 412; and a slightly larger dish
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is illustrated
in Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics,
New York, 1989, pl. 153; another is in the Sir Percival David
Collection in the British Museum, London (A 519).
The present dish comes from the collection of Enid and
Francis Brodie Lodge (1880-1967), early members and strong
supporters of the Oriental Ceramic Society, who contributed to
many of the Society’s exhibitions. Their collection comprised
ceramics from the Tang (618-907), Song (960-1279), Ming
(1368-1644) and Qing dynasties as well as archaic bronzes.