Page 21 - Sotheby's Asian Art PARIS, December 10, 2019

This rare moonflask of oval section and nearly circular
profile has a slender neck flanked by two scroll handles,
the two sides painted in a deep cobalt blue under a blue-
tinged glaze with different flower-and-bird compositions,
both depicting a white-cheeked starling perched on a
flowering branch entwined with a small stem of bamboo,
both scenes bordered above and below by fanciful curly
foliage motifs, the neck also with bamboo, and the handles
accentuated by a scrolling line.
In its form and decoration, the present moonflask
closely copies a Yongle prototype of which only one
example appears to be extant, from the Sir Percival
David Collection and now in the British Museum, London,
illustrated in Regina Krahl and Jessica Harrison-Hall,
Chinese Ceramics. Highlights of the Sir Percival David
Collection, London, 2009, no. 28, p. 61. Only few
Yongzheng examples of this design are known including
the well-known example formerly in the Collection of
Richard de la Mare and the Meiyintang Collection, first
sold at Sotheby’s London, 2nd April 1974, lot 369, last
sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 7th April 2011, lot 76;
and a second example of the same size and design
but unmarked, sold Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 4th and 5th
November 1997, lot 1371.
Like the few other known examples of this type, the
sensitivity of the Qing craftsmen to absorb and reproduce
the qualities of the Yongle original is remarkable and
manifest in the present Yongzheng version. Two of the
unmarked Yongzheng examples were in fact considered
as Yongle originals, see Duncan Mackintosh, Chinese Blue
and White Porcelain, Newton Abbot, 1977, pl. 55, and Daisy
Lion-Goldschmidt, Ming Porcelain, London, 1978, pl. 14.
For a discussion on Qing porcelains with ‘redesigns’ of
Ming patterns including Yongzheng examples, compare
Julian Thompson, Chinese Porcelain. The S.C. Ko
Tianminlou Collection, Part II, Hong Kong, 1987, p. 29.

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