Page 51 - Important Chinese Art Hong Kong Sotheby's April 2017

In its finely potted form and exquisite smooth white glaze, this
moonflask (bianhu) embodies the classic style of the imperial
court during the Yongle period. Although moonflasks of this
type are better known by their underglaze-blue decorated
counterparts, the white-glazed versions are considerably rarer.
The celebrated ‘sweet-white’ glaze was specially devised by
commission of the Yongle Emperor by potters working at the
imperial kilns at Jingdezhen. Also known by connoisseurs as
tianbai, the glaze was exclusively reserved for monochrome
vessels produced during his reign. The immense difficulty in
creating tianbai specimens is evident in the numerous finds at
the Ming imperial kiln site at Jingdezhen. These tianbai sherds
account for over 98% of finds in two consecutive Yongle strata
at the eastern section of Zhushan Zonglu in Jingdezhen city,
attesting to the small quantity that were fired satisfactorily and and another, but lacking a foot, excavated from the waste
therefore delivered rather than destroyed (see the catalogue
to 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,
p. 19).
The term tianbai is thought to be coined by the late-Ming writer
Huang Yizheng, in his Shiwu ganzu [Purple pearl (memory
bead) for remembering things] of 1591, where he characterises
the glaze as ‘white like congealed fat, immaculate like piled-
up snow’ to describe its luxuriousness and purity. Developed
from the blue-tinted qingbai (‘bluish-white’) ware of the Song
dynasty (960-1279) and the matt and opaque shufu wares
of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), the whiter appearance was
achieved by producing the glaze almost entirely from glaze
stone with no or little glaze ash (burned limestone), therefore
containing less calcium carbonate than contemporary
Jingdezhen white glazes. Furthermore, a pure white and fine
porcelain was created through the combination of kaolin-rich
paste with very low levels of iron and titanium.
Moonflasks of this incised type are rare; a closely related
example was sold in our New York rooms, 21st/22nd
September 2005, lot 63; one of slightly larger size, illustrated
in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the Ardebil
Shrine, Washington, 1956, pl. 55, no. 29.458, sold in these
rooms, 31st October 1974, lot 111, is now in the collection of
The Asia Society, New York, illustrated in Denise Patry Leidy,
Treasures of Asian Art. The Asia Society’s Mr and Mrs John
D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, New York, 1994, pl. 170; and a
third example of slightly smaller size, from the Severance and
Greta Millikin Collection and now in the Cleveland Museum
of Art, Cleveland, was included in the Museum’s exhibition
The Severance and Greta Millikin Collection, 1990, cat. no. 42.
Two moonflasks attributed to the Xuande period include one
in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Zhongguo taoci
quanji [Complete collection of Chinese ceramics], vol. 13,
Shanghai, 2000, pl. 13; and another in the Shanghai Museum,
published in Zhongguo meishu quanji. Gonyi meishu bian
[Complete series on Chinese art: Arts and crafts section], vol.
3, Shanghai, 1988, pl. 73.
Undecorated moonflasks of this form and glaze were also
produced; see two sold in these rooms, the first, 11th May
1983, lot 108, and the second, 5th November 1996, lot 764;
heaps of the Ming imperial kilns, included in the exhibition
Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at
Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1996, cat. no. 91, where
the author notes that the later versions have an oval footring
(see p. 244). Another plain white moonflask is illustrated in
Sir John Addis, ‘Hung Wu and Yung Lo White’, Transactions
of the Oriental Ceramic Society, 1975-77, col. pl. 41, pl. 30a,
from a small group of fine white-glazed pieces from the Palace
Museum, Beijing, where he suggests that the incised white
wares were made from c.1420 until the death of the Yongle
Emperor in 1424.
The more widely known blue and white bianhu of this type
include one in the collection of the Ottoman sultans in Turkey,
illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi
Saray Museum, Istanbul, London, 1986, vol. 2, pl. 616; one from
the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, included in the exhibition
Shanhai Hakubutsukan shozō seika jiki ten: meihin de tadoru
Gen, Min, Shin jidai no sometsuke [Blue and white porcelains
from the Shanghai Museum: Development of blue and white
wares from Yuan to Qing dynasty], Matsuya Ginza, Tokyo,
1988, cat. no. 16; and another, from the Jingguantang and
Huang Ding Xuan collections, included in the exhibition In
Pursuit of Antiques. Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Exhibition of the
Min Chiu Society, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1995,
cat. no. 124, sold in these rooms, 29th October 1991, lot 29,
and twice at Christie’s Hong Kong, 3rd November 1996, lot
545, and, 28th November 2006, lot 1512. See also lot 3608 in
this sale.
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