Page 59 - Sotheby's May 10th 2017 London Important Chinese Art

included in The Complete Collection of Treasures, op.cit., pls 20 Short Bibliography
and 21; carved lacquer pieces of comparable size include a box
and cover attributed to the Yuan dynasty, a dish attributed to Sir Percival David, Chinese Connoisseurship: The Ko Ku Yao Lun:
the Yongle period, another box of the Xuande reign, and a box The Essential Criteria of Antiquities, London, 1971.
cover attributed to the early Ming dynasty, ibid., pls 6, 17, 57 and
64, all from the Qing court collection in the Palace Museum, Harry M. Garner, ‘The Export of Chinese Lacquer to Japan in the
Beijing. Yüan and Early Ming Dynasties’, Archives of Asian Art, vol. 25,
1971/2, pp. 6-28.
The present dish has now returned to Sotheby’s London for
the fourth time in over half a century. It has a most illustrious Wang Shixiang, Ancient Chinese Lacquerware, Beijing, 1987.
history, having successively formed part of three important
collections, including that of Sir Percival and Lady David. Lee King-tsi and Hu Shih-chang, ‘Inscriptions on Ming Lacquer’,
Sir Percival, whose uncanny eye for quality is impressively Bulletin of the Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong, no. 10,
documented in his collection of Chinese ceramics, now in 1992-3, pp. 28-34; reprinted in Layered Beauty. The Baoyizhai
the British Museum, was in this case, too, ahead of his time. Collection of Chinese Lacquer, Art Museum, Institute of Chinese
Having generally been drawn to pieces with inscriptions, he was Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
probably intrigued by the signature on this clearly exceptional 2010, pp. 191-200.
piece, although at the time early carved lacquer was still much
of a mystery. Li Jiufang, ‘Carved red lacquer ware and red ware by Shi Dabin,
Ming Dynasty’, Palace Museum Journal, no. 4, 1997.
When the dish was included in the Oriental Ceramic
Society’s Ming exhibition sixty years ago, Fritz Low-Beer, one Lee King-tsi and Hu Shih-chang, ‘Carved Lacquer of the Hongwu
of the greatest lacquer connoisseurs and collectors of the Period’, Oriental Art, vol. XLVII, no. 1, 2001, pp. 10-20, reprinted in
time, wrote in his review of the exhibition (Low-Beer, op.cit., p. Layered Beauty, op.cit., 2010, pp. 171-82.
12), “We owe thanks to the organizers who collected fty- ve
lacquer objects for the O.C.S. exhibition, The Arts of the Ming Lee King-tsi and Hu Shih-chang, ‘Further Observations on
Dynasty. Never before has Ming lacquer been so prominently Carved Lacquer of the Hongwu Period’, Oriental Art, vol. LV, no. 3,
displayed in Britain. Interest in this branch of Chinese art began 2005-6, pp. 41-7; reprinted in Layered Beauty, op.cit., pp. 183-90.
only a few years ago and our knowledge remains scanty. We do
not possess any signi cant examples of Ming lacquer which Craig Clunas and Jessica Harrison-Hall, eds, Ming. Fifty Years
we might attribute with absolute certainty even to the entire that Changed China, The British Museum, London, 2014.
period, not to mention to any of its reigns.” In the exhibition,
none of the lacquer pieces were dated in the catalogue entries,
but the present dish formed part of the “1st group” of lacquers
characterized as “Deeply carved in fourteenth- fteenth
century style” and “all attributed to this early period”, a daring
proposition at the time. While illustrating the present dish in
his review together with only three other pieces, Low-Beer
nevertheless felt obliged to state “I have no de nite opinion as
to when and where this interesting dish was made.”

Percy D. Krolik had assembled an important collection of
Chinese decorative arts, partly sold at Sotheby’s London in
1970, including a group of cloisonné wares that was described
by Edgar Bluett in Oriental Art, Winter 1965, and some archaic
jades, today in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Luben
Alexandrov Basmadjie , of Bulgarian origin, owned some
important early Ming blue-and-white porcelains that were sold
at Sotheby’s London in 1972.

Fig. 1, Lacquer dish with owers
Xuande mark and period
Courtesy of Ashmolean Museum

IMPORTANT CHINESE ART 57