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1252 (mark)

A RARE GE-TYPE LOBED TRIPOD WASHER
QIANLONG SIX-CHARACTER SEAL MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND OF THE PERIOD
(1736-1795)

The washer is fnely potted and modelled after a Song prototype with a broad fat base supported on
three globular feet, rising to steep bracket-lobed sides with a slightly everted rim. The washer is covered
in a grey glaze with a web of fne ‘iron-wire’ crackles. The underside of the base has sixteen spur marks.
9 in. (22.8 cm.) wide

$150,000-200,000

PROVENANCE

E.T. Hall (1924-2001) Collection, no. 265.
Christie’s London, 13 May 2014, lot 408.

Sometimes called ‘bulb bowls’, these tripod vessels were based on Song prototypes, such as the
brush washers in the Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the Exhibition of Sung Dynasty Kuan Ware,
1989, nos. 135-143.

As a result of keen imperial interest in antiquarianism by the Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors,
Song crackled glazes of Ge and Guan type were often copied during the Qing dynasty, and a small
number of vessels of the same shape as the current washer have been preserved. A Ge or Guan-
type washer with a Yongzheng mark, formerly in the Carl Kempe Collection, is illustrated in Oriental
Ceramics, The World’s Great Collections, vol. 8, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm,
Tokyo/New York San Francisco, 1982, no. 274. Interestingly, at some point in the past, an attempt may
have been made to pass of a similar example in the Victoria and Albert Museum as a Song original,
as the mark had been ground of the base of the vessel, which is illustrated by W. B. Honey in The
Ceramic Art of China and Other Countries of the Far East, London, 1954, pl. 43B. A Qianlong-marked
example with Ge-type glaze, from the J.M. Hu and Robert Chang Collections, was included in the
Exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, Christie’s London, 1993,
no. 62. It is clear that this lobed tripod form was much appreciated with crackled glazes, and even
appears with a Ru-type glaze in the Qianlong reign. An example of this Ru-type in the collection of the
Nanjing Museum is illustrated in The Oficial Porcelain of the Chinese Qing Dynasty, Shanghai, 2003,
p. 334.

清乾隆 仿哥釉葵口洗 六字篆書款

(another view)

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