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Coupe et soucoupe, Chine, ca 17° siècle

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Lot 47: Coupe et soucoupe, Chine, ca 17° siècle. Laque tixi et métal argenté. D. 13,5 cm. H. 4,5 cmEst: 400 € - 800. Courtesy Cornette de Saint-Cyr.

Les surfaces sont traitées avec le classique décor de lingzhi laissant apparaître les filets de couches de laque rouge. Petits accidents visibles.

Provenance : - Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset
- Ancienne collection Robert Rousset (1901-1981).

Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Arts d’Asie Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset Ensemble d’objets hérités de son oncle Robert Rousset. Jeudi 15 octobre 2020 à 14 heures 30. Experts : Cabinet Daffos-Estournel. Tél : +33 (0)6 09 22 55 13 - daffos-estournel@aaoarts.com


Immortel taoïste, Chine, ca 17° siècle

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Lot 48: Immortel taoïste, Chine, ca 17° siècle. Ivoire. H. 25,5 cmEst: 800 € - 1 500. Courtesy Cornette de Saint-Cyr.

Belle représentation classique d’un des immortels. En dépit de petits accidents et de la perte de la main droite qui aurait pu tenir un eventail, on peut supposer qu’il puisse s’agir du fameux Zhongli Quan.

Provenance : - Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset
- Ancienne collection Robert Rousset (1901-1981).

Spécimen en ivoire d’Elephantidae spp (I/A)pré-Convention, antérieur au 1er juillet 1947 et de ce fait conforme aux réglementations en vigueur. Pour une sortie de l’Union Européenne, un CITES de ré-export sera nécessaire, celui-ci étant à la charge du futur acquéreur. La délivrance d’un tel document n’est pas automatique. Pour une éventuelle réexportation, il appartiendra à l’adjudicataire de se renseigner - préalablement à tout achat - auprès des douanes du pays concerné, particulièrement s’il s’agit de la Chine ou des Etats-Unis.

Import restrictions may apply or a CITES permit might be required as this lot is made (or contains) ivory (Elephantidae spp., I/A), coral (Corallium spp., II/B),- tortoise shell (Cheloniidae spp., I/A) or rhinoceros horn (Rhinocerotidae spp., I/A). Please note that- it is the client’s responsibility to determine and satisfy the requirements of any applicable laws or regulations applying to the export or import of property containing such a material, specially for clients living in China or the United States of America.

 Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Arts d’Asie Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset Ensemble d’objets hérités de son oncle Robert Rousset. Jeudi 15 octobre 2020 à 14 heures 30. Experts : Cabinet Daffos-Estournel. Tél : +33 (0)6 09 22 55 13 - daffos-estournel@aaoarts.com

Budai et enfants, Chine, ca 18° siècle

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Lot 48: Budai et enfants, Chine, ca 18° siècle. Ivoire. 7,5 x 5 cmEst: 1 200 € - 1 800 €. Courtesy Cornette de Saint-Cyr.

Budaï est souvent ainsi représenté entouré d’enfants du fait de son association traditionnelle avec leur protection.

Provenance : - Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset
- Ancienne collection Robert Rousset (1901-1981)
- Porte deux étiquettes d’anciens inventaires de la collection Robert Rousset antérieurs à 1935.

Spécimen en ivoire d’Elephantidae spp (I/A)pré-Convention, antérieur au 1er juillet 1947 et de ce fait conforme aux réglementations en vigueur. Pour une sortie de l’Union Européenne, un CITES de ré-export sera nécessaire, celui-ci étant à la charge du futur acquéreur. La délivrance d’un tel document n’est pas automatique. Pour une éventuelle réexportation, il appartiendra à l’adjudicataire de se renseigner - préalablement à tout achat - auprès des douanes du pays concerné, particulièrement s’il s’agit de la Chine ou des Etats-Unis.

Import restrictions may apply or a CITES permit might be required as this lot is made (or contains) ivory (Elephantidae spp., I/A), coral (Corallium spp., II/B),- tortoise shell (Cheloniidae spp., I/A) or rhinoceros horn (Rhinocerotidae spp., I/A). Please note that- it is the client’s responsibility to determine and satisfy the requirements of any applicable laws or regulations applying to the export or import of property containing such a material, specially for clients living in China or the United States of America.

 Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Arts d’Asie Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset Ensemble d’objets hérités de son oncle Robert Rousset. Jeudi 15 octobre 2020 à 14 heures 30. Experts : Cabinet Daffos-Estournel. Tél : +33 (0)6 09 22 55 13 - daffos-estournel@aaoarts.com

« Femme médecin », Chine, ca 17°-18° siècles

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Lot 72: « Femme médecin », Chine, ca 17°-18° siècles. Ivoire.  L. 10 cm. Est: 800 € - 1 500 €. Courtesy Cornette de Saint-Cyr.

Elle est traditionnellement représentée couchée, une jambe repliée, la main droite soutenant sa tête. Belle patine, traces de pigments noirs.

Provenance : - Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset
- Ancienne collection Robert Rousset (1901-1981).

Spécimen en ivoire d’Elephantidae spp (I/A)pré-Convention, antérieur au 1er juillet 1947 et de ce fait conforme aux réglementations en vigueur. Pour une sortie de l’Union Européenne, un CITES de ré-export sera nécessaire, celui-ci étant à la charge du futur acquéreur. La délivrance d’un tel document n’est pas automatique. Pour une éventuelle réexportation, il appartiendra à l’adjudicataire de se renseigner - préalablement à tout achat - auprès des douanes du pays concerné, particulièrement s’il s’agit de la Chine ou des Etats-Unis.

Import restrictions may apply or a CITES permit might be required as this lot is made (or contains) ivory (Elephantidae spp., I/A), coral (Corallium spp., II/B),- tortoise shell (Cheloniidae spp., I/A) or rhinoceros horn (Rhinocerotidae spp., I/A). Please note that- it is the client’s responsibility to determine and satisfy the requirements of any applicable laws or regulations applying to the export or import of property containing such a material, specially for clients living in China or the United States of America.

 Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Arts d’Asie Succession de Madame Anne-Marie Rousset Ensemble d’objets hérités de son oncle Robert Rousset. Jeudi 15 octobre 2020 à 14 heures 30. Experts : Cabinet Daffos-Estournel. Tél : +33 (0)6 09 22 55 13 - daffos-estournel@aaoarts.com

Huntington acquires newly discovered John Singleton Copley painting

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A rare Guan-type lobed washer, Ming dynasty

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A rare Guan-type lobed washer, Ming dynasty

A rare Guan-type lobed washer, Ming dynasty

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Lot 530. A rare Guan-type lobed washer, Ming dynastyDiameter 4⅞ in., 12.3 cmEstimate 60,000 - 80,000 USD. Lot sold 88,200 USD. © Sotheby's 2020.

elegantly potted, the shallow flaring sides rising from a flat base sweeping up to a rim divided into six lobes, the body covered in an unctuous thick pale beige glaze suffused with a matrix of gold and black crackles, the base with five 'sesame-seed' spur marks

Provenance: Collection of Sir Herbert Ingram, 2nd Bt (1875-1958) (by repute).
English Private Collection.

Note: In its seeming simplicity, the present washer encapsulates the spirit of the famous Guanyao, the fabled ‘official ware’ specially created for the imperial court of the Southern Song (1127-1279) in Hangzhou, Zhejiang of south China. The gently lobed form and unctuous glaze suffused with a fine interlaced network of crackle could only be achieved through highly sophisticated techniques, and as such, Guan wares made for the Southern Song court, as well as their later Yuan and Ming dynasty versions were made in very small numbers.

Guan ware was already celebrated in contemporary texts of the Southern Song period. It showcases Chinese potters' technical mastery and aesthetic vision. Like great artists and artisans anywhere, they captured – perhaps inadvertently – the zeitgeist of the period in their creations. The works of art they conceived embodied the leitmotifs of China’s highly educated scholar-officials, the non-aristocratic ruling elite of the Song (960-1279). The unctuous glaze of the present washer with its smooth pleasing texture and subtle gloss was achieved through gradual application of multiple layers and presumably successive firings. The thick coating thus softly envelopes the elementary form to create an object that is pleasing to touch. The distinct web of veins of the large-scale crackle was caused by different degrees of shrinkage between the glaze and body material, achieved through a well-controlled cooling process after the last firing and subsequent staining. The lines move through the glaze in a naturalistic manner, giving the whole piece the illusion of being carved out of a pebble of jade. The dark blackish body visible at the foot adds depth to the glaze and gravitas to the whole object, as it subtly accentuates the shape. In the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), when Guan ware was much copied by the imperial kilns of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, this dark stoneware body was generally imitated by coating Jingdezhen’s white porcelain with a blackish-brown slip before glazing.

Washers of this form are extremely rare and are inspired by Guan Song prototypes; see Guan Song prototypes in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Guanyao ciqi / The Guan Kilns, Beijing, 2016, pl. 20, together with one with slightly shorter and rounder sides and unglazed foot, pl. 19, and its Ming counterpart, pl. 52 (fig. 1); and another in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, attributed to the Southern Song - Yuan dynasty, included in the exhibition Precious as the Morning Star. 12th-14th Century Celadons in the Qing Court Collection, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2016, cat. no. IV-3 (fig. 2). Compare also a Ge example of similar form but with shortened sides and an unglazed foot, attributed to the Southern Song dynasty, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, published in Selection of Ge Ware. The Palace Museum Collection and Archaeological Discoveries, Beijing, 2017, pl. 20.

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Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, Live Auction, 23 September 2020, New York

An exceptionally rare Ru-type conjoined double-vase, Qianlong seal mark and period (1736-1795)

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Lot 531. An exceptionally rare Ru-type conjoined double-vase, Qianlong seal mark and period (1736-1795). Height 7¼ in., 18.4 cm. Estimate 40,000 - 60,000 USDLot sold 88,200 USD. © Sotheby's 2020.

formed of two adjoined baluster vases, each with a broad swelling shoulder rising from a splayed foot to a contracted neck and galleried rim, applied overall with an unctuous caesious-colored glaze suffused with a fine crackle, the knife-pared foot and mouth rim applied with a brown wash, the base with the six-character seal mark inscribed in a horizontal line in underglaze blue. 

Provenance: Collection of Ian Thomas (1929-1993) LVO.
English Private Collection.

NoteConjoined vases, incorporating sections of two or more shapes to create a single vessel, were among the most technical challenging wares produced by the imperial kilns during the Qianlong period. The double-vase form is mostly commonly associated with enameled porcelain, including the famous European-subject falangcai double-vase in the Eisei Bunko Museum, Tokyo, illustrated in Toji taikei [World Ceramics. Qing Official Kilns], vol. 46, Tokyo, 1973, pl. 23. Compare also the famille-rose 'boys' vase and cover of the same form, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Porcelains with Cloisonne Enamel Decoration and Famille Rose Decoration, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 26. Only one other Qianlong mark and period conjoined vase with a monochrome glaze is known, also with the same Ru-type glaze, acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1879 (acc.no. 79.2.952) (fig. 1). 

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Double Vase, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Qianlong mark and period (1736–95). Porcelain with a clair-de-lune glaze, H. 7 1/8 in. (181.1 cm); W. 6 in. (15.2 cm).Purchase by subscription, 1879, acc.no. 79.2.952. © 2000–2020 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, Live Auction, 23 September 2020, New York

 

A fine large molded celadon-glazed bowl, Qianlong seal mark and period (1736-1795)

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Lot 532. A fine large molded celadon-glazed bowl, Qianlong seal mark and period (1736-1795). Diameter 13⅜ in., 34 cmEstimate 50,000 - 70,000 USDLot sold 182,700 USD. © Sotheby's 2020.

the deep rounded sides rising from a slightly tapered foot to an everted rim, the exterior finely molded and decorated in white slip with sprays of pomegranate, peaches, lychee, and ‘Buddha’s hand’ citron suspended above resplendent boughs of auspicious flowers including, peony, lotus, prunus, and aster, covered overall in a lustrous celadon glaze save for the rim and footring, the base with a six-character seal mark in underglaze blue, wood stand (2).

ProvenanceCollection of Dr. Ho-Ching (1900-1964) and Mme Von Sung (1903-2005) Yang, acquired between 1939 and 1955, and thence by descent.

Note: The present example belongs to a rare group of large celadon-glazed bowls decorated to the exterior with fruiting and flowering auspicious plants in shallow relief. These bowls were made during the Yongzheng (r. 1723-1735) and Qianlong (r. 1735-1796) reigns and each bears the respective emperor’s seal mark in underglaze blue on the base. The pair to this bowl, also from the collection of Dr. and Mme. Ho-Ching Yang, was sold in these rooms, 16th September 2009, lot 218.

Compare also a Qianlong period bowl of this type, but with a white interior, in the collection of the Tsui Museum of Art, illustrated in The Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1991, pl. 127. A closely related bowl from the Meiyintang Collection sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 9th October 2012, lot 33; and a third sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30th May 2006, lot 1349. For examples with a Yongzheng seal mark, see a bowl in the collection of Anthony Gustav de Rothschild illustrated in Regina Krahl, The Anthony de Rothschild Collection of Chinese Ceramics, vol. 2, London, 1996, cat. no. 144; one from the collection of the British Rail Pension Fund that sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 16th May 1989, lot 57; and another that sold at Christie’s New York, 18th September 2003, lot 350.

Ho-Ching Yang (1900-1964) studied at Tongji Medical College in Shanghai and went on to earn a second medical degree from Rostock University in Germany, where he graduated with the highest honors with a specialization in otolaryngology. Subsequently, he and his wife, Madame Von Sung Yang (1903-2005), moved to Suzhou, where Dr. Yang began his practice, and the couple engaged in the cultural life of the city and embarked on a lifelong pursuit of collecting Chinese porcelain. In 1937, Dr. and Mme. Yang moved to London with their six children, and two years later the family relocated to New York. There, Dr. Yang became a prominent stock broker, and served as Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors at a prominent Wall Street firm. In New York, Dr. and Mme. Yang's passion for the arts and culture flourished. They avidly collected Chinese porcelain and dedicated themselves to supporting the Chinese community, most notably through their involvement in the China Institute in America, where Dr. Yang served as President of the Board of Trustees, and Mme. Yang served as a Trustee.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, Live Auction, 23 September 2020, New York

 


A gold bracelet, qianzhuo, Liao dynasty

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Lot 347. A gold bracelet, qianzhuo, Liao dynasty; 2 3/4in (7cm) wide. Sold for US$ 10,700 (€ 9,151). © Bonhams 2001-2020

Hammered from a strip of gold, the C-shaped bracelet gently tapering toward each end, and terminated in a carefully rolled scroll, the outer side with three conforming ribs, enclosing two bands of delicately engraved acanthus leaves against a typical punched background.

NoteA slightly more elaborate pair of this general shape from the Liao dynasty was published in Emma Bunker et al Adornment for the Body and Soul: Ancient Chinese Ornaments from the Mengdiexuan Collection (Hong Kong: The University Museum and Art Gallery, 1999), p236.

Compare also, a Liao bracelet similar to the present example illustrated in Chinese Gold Ornaments by Simon Kwan and Sun Ji (Hong Kong: Muwen Tang Fine Art Publication Ltd., 2003), pp. 382-383, pl. 231. Kwan and Sun suggest that the Liao continued stylistic developments dating to the Tang dynasty. See the Tang prototypes published in Zhongguo Gudai Jinyin Shoushi, Yang Zhishui (Beijing: Gugong, 2014), vol. 1, p. 129.

Bonhams. Elegant Embellishments Featuring the RenLu Collectieon, 21 Sep 2020, 10:00 EDT, New York

A pair of gold 'double-gourd' earrings, erhuan, Ming dynasty style

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Lot 349. A pair of gold 'double-gourd' earrings, erhuan, Ming dynasty style; 3/4in (1.9cm) high excluding pin (2). Sold for US$ 1,912 (€ 1,635). © Bonhams 2001-2020

The two rounded sections separated by a small, pearled ring at its waist, and hammered into eight panels to the side walls, each framing chased scrolling patterns, the base of the gourd decorated with a cash design, the top capped by a lotus leaf with a long S-shaped stem cleverly serving as the pin.

NoteThe double-gourd motif carries many important, auspicious meanings in the Chinese culture including fertility, immortality, prosperity and high social status. The image appears in many forms of art throughout the Chinese history.

Yang Zhishui states in Zhongguo Gudai Jinyin Shoushi (Beijing: Gugong, 2014) that the gourd-form earrings are a commonly seen design during the Ming dynasty. Such design was developed from the Yuan dynasty prototype (vol. 1, pp. 601-609).

Examples of related form are seen in Adornment for the Body and Soul, Ancient Chinese Ornaments from the Mengdiexuan Collection, Emma C. Bunker et. al. (Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong Museum Society, 1999), pp. 282-283, pl. 124 & 125. Compare also a pair of gold 'double-gourd' ear pendants from the Carl Kempe Collection, sold at Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 11 April 2008, lot 2324.

Bonhams. Elegant Embellishments Featuring the RenLu Collectieon, 21 Sep 2020, 10:00 EDT, New York

A rare blue and white octagonal jarlet, Yongzheng six-character mark in underglaze blue and of the period (1723-1735)

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Lot 817.  A rare blue and white octagonal jarlet, Yongzheng six-character mark in underglaze blue and of the period (1723-1735); 4 ¼ in. (10.8 cm.) highEstimate USD 60,000 - USD 80,000Price realised USD 60,000© Christie's  Images Ltd 2020.

Each facet finely painted with vertical leafy lingzhi scroll below the small, flared mouth.

Provenance: The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection, Chicago, acquired prior to 1990.

NoteA similar Yongzheng-marked jarlet, also with a lingzhi pattern, in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Qingdai yuyao ciqi gugong bowuyuan zang (Porcelain from the Qing Dynasty Imperial Kilns in the Palace Museum), Vol. 1, Part II, Beijing, 2005, pl. 26.
For a Ming-dynasty, fifteenth-century prototype of the present jar, see the lobed jar with blue and white floral and fruit decoration from the collection of C. P. Lin, illustrated by R. Scott, Elegant Form and Harmonious Decoration. Four Dynasties of Jingdezhen Porcelain, London, 1992, no. 28.

Christie's. Sacred and Imperial: The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection Part I, New York, 24 September 2020

A rare 'Daoist emblems' doucai bowl, Yongzheng six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle and of the period (1

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Lot 821. A rare 'Daoist emblems'doucai bowl, Yongzheng six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle and of the period (1723-1735); 6 in. (15.3 cm.) diamEstimate USD 60,000 - USD 80,000Price realised USD 137,500© Christie's  Images Ltd 2020.

Decorated with the Eight Daoist Emblems above a ruyi border on the exterior and a double peach spray in the interior.

Provenance: Mathias Komor, New York, 12 March 1956.
The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection, Chicago.

NoteThe emblems of the Eight Daoist Immortals provide the decoration on this bowl and each is tied with a fluttering ribbon. Each ribbon is painted in two tones in a style that is reminiscent of the fluttering scarves in Buddhist art of the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907). Each emblem shown is the object which each immortal habitually carries, and with which they are associated. The interior of the bowl is decorated with a spray of peaches, symbolizing Shoulao, the god of Longevity, who is often seen accompanying the Eight Daoist Immortals.
A pair of Yongzheng bowls, formerly in the T. Y. Chao Collection, bearing the same design as the current bowl, was included in the exhibition, Ch'ing Porcelain from the Wah Kwong Collection, Art Gallery of the Chinese University, Hong Kong, 1973, no. 89. Another Yongzheng example is illustrated in The Tsui Museum of Art - Chinese Ceramics IV, Qing Ceramics, Hong Kong, 1995, pl. 139. Yongzheng bowls with this design have also been sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 30 October 2000, lot 164, and 31 October 2004, lot 108.

Christie's. Sacred and Imperial: The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection Part I, New York, 24 September 2020

A rare pale greenish-white jade 'dragon' vase group, Qing dynasty, 18th century

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Lot 822. A rare pale greenish-white jade 'dragon' vase group, Qing dynasty, 18th century; 6 ¾ in. (17.1 cm.) highEstimate USD 80,000 - USD 120,000Price realised USD 40,000© Christie's  Images Ltd 2020.

The cylindrical vase carved in high relief with a dragon chasing a flaming pearl, emerges from the rockwork that rises to one side with wannianqing (Rohdea japonica) from which issues leafy fruiting plants, hongmu stand.

ProvenanceThe James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection, Chicago, acquired prior to 1990.

NoteThe motif of dragons clambering on a vase was a popular design on eighteenth-century jades. Compare a larger, white jade vase (29 cm. high), also without a cover, in the Qing Court Collection, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Jadeware, vol. III, Hong Kong, 1995, pl. 63, which is similarly carved in high relief with dragons chasing a flaming pearl. The carving on the present vase is particularly dynamic, most notably seen in the sinuous body and powerful claws of the dragon. The form of this vase bears a similarity in design to conjoined vases. A conjoined vase, carved in yellow jade, also carved with a dragon chasing a flaming pearl, was sold at Christie’s New York, 17- 18 September 2015, lot 2396.

Christie's. Sacred and Imperial: The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection Part I, New York, 24 September 2020

A diamond silver and gold maid of honor cypher, Russia, circa 1855-1860, number 59

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Lot 823. A diamond silver and gold maid of honor cypher, Russia, circa 1855-1860, number 59; 3 in. (7.6 cm.) high, with crownEstimate USD 20,000 - USD 30,000Price realised USD 52,500© Christie's  Images Ltd 2020.

In the form of the Cyrillic initials ‘MA’ for Empress Maria Alexandrovna (1824-1880) and Dowager Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (1798-1860), set with old and rose-cut diamonds mounted in silver-topped gold, surmounted by a hinged diamond-set Imperial crown, with suspension loop and pin, apparently unmarked, numbered 59 on reverse.

Provenance: Anonymous sale; Christie’s, Geneva, 17 November 1981, lot 183.
The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection, Chicago.

NoteThe initials refer to Empress Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander II, and to the Dowager Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas I. A lady-in-waiting serving for both Empresses had the cypher brooch with their two interlaced initials.

Christie's. Sacred and Imperial: The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection Part I, New York, 24 September 2020

Zhang Ruitu (Attributed to, 1570-1641), Landscapes and Calligraphy

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Lot 811. Zhang Ruitu (Attributed to, 1570-1641), Landscapes and CalligraphyEstimate USD 100,000 - USD 150,000Price realised USD 3,210,000© Christie's  Images Ltd 2020.

Album of fourteen double leaves, ink on gold-flecked paper. Each leaf measures 11 ½ x 13 5/8 in. (29.2 x 34.8 cm.). Each leaf inscribed and signed, with a total of twenty-six seals of the artist. Dated yichou year of the Tianqi reign (1625). Dedicated to Zhu Wan (active 1573-1620). Frontispiece inscribed and signed by Naito Konan (1866-1934), with three seals. Colophon by Nagao Uzan (1864-1942), with two seals. Titleslips by Nagao Uzan and Naito Konan, with two seals each. Eighteen collector’s seals

ProvenanceMayuyama & Co., Japan.
Ambassador Jean Daridan (1906-2002) Collection, France, until 1970.
Purchased from J.C. Moreau-Gobard, Paris, 10 September 1970;
The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection, Chicago.

Literature: Sekai Bijutsu Zenshu, vol. 20, Heibonsha, Tokyo, 1953, p. 259, pls. 26-27 (illustrated, two leaves).
Yoshiho Yonezawa, Painting in the Ming Dynasty, Mayuyama & Co., Tokyo, 1956, pl. 20 (illustrated, one leaf).
Osvald Siren, Chinese Paintings, Leading Masters and Principles, London, 1956, vol. 7, p. 155.
The Arts Club of Chicago, Chinese Art from the Collection of James W. and Marilynn AlsdorfChicago, 1970, no. P5.
Mayuyama & Co., Ltd, Mayuyama, Seventy Years, Volume Two, Tokyo, 1976, no. 178, p. 89 (illustrated, one leaf).

Exhibited: Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chinese Art from the Collection of James W. and Marilynn Alsdorf, 21 September-13 November 1970.

Note: The calligrapher and painter Zhang Ruitu truly embodied all the qualities of a traditional Chinese literati artist. He was academically accomplished and placed third in the imperial civil service examination held during the thirty-fifth year of the Wanli reign (1607) and so was awarded the title of tanhua. He held various high government posts until he suffered an ignominious forced-retirement after he was implicated in the corruption charges against the once-powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568-1627).

The recipient of this album by Zhang Ruitu was a literatus named Zhu Wan, whose sobriquet was Jimei and style name Baiyue. According to Shushi huiyao, he was a distinguished calligrapher of clerical script and was active during the Wanli reign (1573-1620). He was also well-regarded for his fine cursive and standard script, which he modeled after Yan Zhenqing (709-985). While we do not know Zhang Ruitu’s relationship with Zhu Wan, nor do we know the circumstance under which the album was created or commissioned, it is possible if unusual for a work of art to be dedicated to a recipient who has passed away in memoriam. Of the eleven poems written in this album, only one is an original by Zhang Ruitu. The authors of the texts in sequential order are: Li Bai (701-762), Gao Lian (1573-1620), Zhang Ruitu, Chen Jiru (1558-1639), Lu Lun (739-799), Tao Qian (Yuanming, 365-427), Tao Hongjing (456-536), Zhang Hu (Ca. 785-849), Liu Zongyuan (773-819), Jiao Dao (779-843) and Su Shi (1037-1101).

There are six double-leaf paintings in the album, five of which are accompanied by poetic couplets. It is reasonable to assume that Zhang Ruitu’s creative process began with selecting the desired poems, and then illustrating them. The opening vignette serves as a fine example: Zhang Ruitu inscribed Li Bai’s verses: “A house near the Blue Mountain similar to that of Xie Tiao; willow branches drape over the door like those of Tao Yuanming.” The Blue Mountain is located southeast of Dangtu county in Anhui province. Xie Tiao (464-499) was a literatus of the Qi Kingdom of the Southern Dynasty and once held the governorship of Xuan city. While he was there, he built a house in the southern part of the Blue Mountain. Five willow trees near the front door refers to the reclusive residence of Tao Qian, who had five willows planted next to his house. Deep in the pictorial space, Zhang Ruitu situated a residential compound in the background mountains, where willow tress—disproportionally oversized for emphasis—are prominently featured near the front entrance. The same iconography of willows is repeated in the middle ground, with one willow arching over and framing a lakeside pavilion where two figures have gathered.

Echoing the landscape imagery in the album, the stand-alone poems without illustrations also share the same recurring theme—they are mostly narratives that describe the observations of nature's sights and sounds, from the perspectives of hermit mountain dwellers and visitors to solitary temples in the mountains. The longing for nature, tranquility, and simplicity, away from politics, worldly entanglements, and artificial ornaments, is clearly reflected through both the text selection and pictorial interpretations. While themes like this—a perennial favorite among the traditional literati—could easily appear to be a trope, nuances articulated by Zhang Ruitu have transformed the scene into a refreshing presentation of a literati ideal.

Throughout the album, Zhang Ruitu, one of the most highly regarded calligraphers of the Ming dynasty, wrote with his signature style: angular, geometric, energetic, and keeping the size of the characters uniform. His paintings hark back to the literati tradition of the Song and Yuan dynasties, where the ink monotone delineations of the mountains and streams emphasize evocation of nature rather than verisimilitude. This album is accompanied by a titleslip written by Naito Tora (1866-1934). Better known as Naito Konan, he was a renowned historian and sinologist whose research and publications became very influential culturally as well as politically. He was a co-founder of the Kyoto School of historiography. The concluding pages bear a colophon by Nagao Uzan (1864-1942), an accomplished sinologist, calligrapher, painter, collector, and seal carver. In the early twentieth century, he worked in the Commercial Press in Shanghai, where he participated in the editing of textbooks for elementary schools in China. As a result of his decade in China and rich collection of Chinese paintings and calligraphy, Nagao Uzan was proud of his expertise in Chinese culture..

Christie's. Sacred and Imperial: The James and Marilynn Alsdorf Collection Part I, New York, 24 September 2020


Sotheby's to offer Sandro Botticelli's Renaissance masterpiece 'Young Man Holding a Roundel'

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Sandro Botticelli, Young Man Holding a RoundelEstimated to sell for in excess of $80 millionCourtesy Sotheby's.

NEW YORK, NY.- It was in Early Renaissance Italy that portraits of notable individuals first came to be considered high art. Florentine master Sandro Botticelli was at the forefront of this transformation, depicting his subjects in the second half of the 15th century with unprecedented directness and insight – decades before Leonardo da Vinci painted his enduring Mona Lisa.

Botticelli was celebrated in his own time and sought out, from an early age, by the richest of patrons for commissions that only they could afford. But while he created some of the most arresting and penetrating portraits in the history of Western Art, only around a dozen examples have survived today – with almost all of them now residing in major museum collections.

Sotheby’s will offer one of Botticelli’s very finest portraits, Young Man Holding a Roundel, as the highlight of our annual Masters Week sales series in New York in January 2021. The work is estimated to sell for in excess of $80 million, which will establish it in art market history as one of the most significant portraits, of any period, ever to appear at auction – alongside Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (sold in 2006 for $87.9 million) and Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr Gachet (sold in 1990 for $82.5 million).

Young Man Holding a Roundel is the pictorial synthesis of the ideals, the magic and the beauty of Renaissance Florence where, for the first time since antiquity, the individual and the human figure were at the center of both life and art, and would come to define our understanding of humanism as we know it today. Botticelli was at the vanguard of this movement, and his revolutionary style lead him to be one of the first artists to abandon the tradition of depicting sitters in profile. Yet for all it embodies of the Florentine Renaissance, the painting is timelessly modern in its stark simplicity, bold colors, and graphic linearity.

Young Man Holding a Roundel is comparable in its inventiveness and superb quality with the finest portraits by Botticelli in museum collections, ranking in importance alongside Portrait of a young man with the medal of Cosimo de’ Medici at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and Portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. All these portraits appear to have been executed in the late 1470s / early 1480s, when Botticelli was at the height of his powers and embarking on his series of large-scale mythological and allegorical works that today rank among the most familiar and celebrated images in the canon of Western Art – including Primavera (late 1470s / early 1480s) and The Birth of Venus (mid 1480s), both at the Uffizi Gallery.

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Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of a young man with the medal of Cosimo de' Medici, Late 1470s / Early 1480s, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

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Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici, late 1470s or early 1480s, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 

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Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, late 1470s or early 1480s, Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The present painting differs from any other portrait of the time in the fascinating way in which Botticelli has shown his sitter holding a small roundel in his hand depicting a saint. This roundel is an original 14th-century work attributed to the Sienese painter Bartolommeo Bulgarini, which was inserted into the panel on which Botticelli painted his portrait. The significance of this striking visual device remains to be decoded, but must relate in some way to the identity of the handsome young nobleman who shows it off so proudly.

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Detail of Sandro Botticelli's Young Man Holding a RoundelEstimated to sell for in excess of $80 million. Courtesy Sotheby's.

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Detail of Sandro Botticelli's Young Man Holding a RoundelEstimated to sell for in excess of $80 million. Courtesy Sotheby's.

While Botticelli’s noble sitters would likely have been well-known to audiences at the time, many of their identities have been lost to history. Though modest and restrained, the young gentleman’s clothing is clearly of the finest quality, and his elegant and contemplative demeanor embody the neo-Platonist and humanist philosophies that defined the culture of the Florentine elite. In the past it has been suggested that he is Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, whose brother Lorenzo was an important patron of Botticelli. Although there is no definitive evidence of this identification, Botticelli did indeed paint portraits of members of the Medici family and their circle.

Despite the apparent clarity and certainty of every line in Young Man Holding a Roundel, Botticelli was subtly adapting and developing the pose and details as he worked on the painting. X-rays and infra-red reflectograms not only show the structure of incised circles and lines that are characteristic of Botticelli’s method of plotting out his compositions, but also reveal extensive underdrawing that differs in many details from the finished painting. This process of continuous revision is symptomatic of the perfectionist quest for the ideal that is a hallmark of his art.

Young Man Holding a Roundel was first securely recorded in the 1930s in the collection of Lord Newborough at Caernarvon in Wales, and is believed to have been acquired by his ancestor Sir Thomas Wynn, 1st Lord Newborough (1736-1807) while living in Tuscany. In 1935/8, the portrait passed via a London dealer to a private collector, whose heirs sold it at auction in 1982 to the present owner for £810,000.

In the past 50 years, the painting has spent extended periods on loan at the National Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. It has also featured prominently in major exhibitions at the Royal Academy, the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

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One of the greatest Renaissance paintings remaining in private hands. Estimated to sell for in excess of $80 million during Sotheby’s Masters Week Auctions in January 2021 in New York. Courtesy Sotheby's.

 

$8.3 million rare Warring States Period Vessel drives Sotheby's bi-annual Asia Week Sales

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Lot 578. An Exceptionally Rare and Important Gold, Silver and Glass-Embellished Bronze Vessel, fanghuWarring States period, 4th-3rd century BC. Height 13¾ in., 35.1 cm. Estimate: 2,500,000 - 3,500,000 USD. Lot sold 8,307,000 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's. 

NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s bi-annual Asia Week sale series in New York achieved $36.4 million this week – significantly above the series’ high estimate of $29.1 million, and all sales surpassing their high estimates. Works from this season’s sales were sold to a diverse group of collectors worldwide, highlighted by An Exceptionally Rare and Important Gold, Silver and Glass-Embellished Bronze Vessel, which achieved $8.3 million following a 12-minute bidding battle and was the top selling lot of the week. Below is a summary of the works and collections that drove these results.

Angela McAteer, Sotheby’s Head of Chinese Works of Art Department in New York, commented: “We are thrilled with the results from this week’s sales of Chinese Works of Art. The strong results demonstrated the powerful and continued strength of the Chinese art market, and showcases the extraordinary array of works offered across categories– including Kangxi porcelain; Chinese jades; early ritual metalwork; Buddhist bronzes and more – most of which have not been seen by the market for many decades. We saw active and deep bidding activity across sales, representing a truly international clientele. It was especially exciting to once again hold our Asia Week sales in our New York salesroom, and we look forward to continued success in March next year.”

Anu Ghosh-Mazumdar, Sotheby’s Head of Indian & Southeast Asian Art Department in New York, said: “As we commemorate our 35th year of Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Works of Art sales in New York, we were proud to present a sale of exceptional works, led by a discovery piece - A Gilt Copper Figure Of Avalokiteshvara formerly in the legendary collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and emerging for the first time in nearly a century. We are delighted that this masterpiece will now occupy pride of place in a distinguished private collection. Throughout the sale, we saw active bidding from across the world, and yesterday’s success indicated the market’s support for high quality artwork.”

KANGXI PORCELAIN – A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Auction Total: $4.5 Million

The exquisite collection of Kangxi porcelain kicked off Asia Week with a thrilling start, as the first three works offered each generously exceeded their high estimated by multiple times, and saw deep bidding activity for each lot. The auction achieved $4.5 million – exceeding its high estimate of $3.1 million.

The group was led by A Rare Peachbloom-Glazed 'Chrysanthemum' Vase, which fetched $746,000 – nearly five times its high estimate of $150,000. Known as juban ping, 'chrysanthemum petal vase', this piece is remarkable for its well-balanced form and delicate rose-pink glaze. The technological and artistic advances created during the Kangxi reign at the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen are illustrated in the present vase. Of all the innovative forms developed in the Kangxi period, chrysanthemum vases were perhaps the most influential, as they inspired the numerous chrysanthemum-shaped vessels of the succeeding Yongzheng reign.

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Lot 116. A rare peachblom-glazed 'chrysanthemum' vase, Kangxi mark and period (1662-1722); Height 8¼ in., 21 cm. Estimate: 100,000 - 150,000 USDLot sold 746,000 USDCourtesy Sotheby's.

Cf. my post: A rare peachblom-glazed 'chrysanthemum' vase, Kangxi mark and period (1662-1722) 

JUNKUNC: CHINESE JADE CARVINGS
Auction Total: $6.3 Million

A selection of more than 60 jades on offer from the renowned collection of Stephen Junkunc, III achieved $6.3 million, surpassing the auction’s $5 million high estimate. The sale marks the continued success of the Junkunc Collection, which has raised over $28 million across Sotheby’s auctions since 2018.

Following an eight-minute bidding battle, an exceedingly rare Large Yellow and Russet Jade Carving of a Mythical Beast realized $1.7 million – more than five times its high estimate of $300,000. Outstanding for the playful yet dynamic rendering of the mythical beast and its impressive size, this carving successfully captures the supernatural vitality of the creature. The notched spine and muscular body which is poised as though ready for action, along with the pronounced eyes and curled features such as its beard, tail and ears, display the technical expertise of its carver. Highly tactile in its smooth finish and impeccably modeled in the round, this carving would have been particularly favored by the jade connoisseur.

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Lot 227. A Large Yellow and Russet Jade Carving of a Mythical Beast, Qianlong period (1736-1795). Length 5⅞ in., 15 cm. Estimate: 200,000 - 300,000 USD. Lot sold 1,714,000 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

well carved, crouching on its four powerful legs as if preparing to pounce, its head turned gently to the left, detailed with a short, curled pointy beard, a long snout, bulging eyes, and a finely incised mane flanked by a pair of large furled ears, its pronounced ridged spine terminating in a long bushy tail swept against the right haunch, the softly polished stone of greenish-yellow tone with some areas of russet coloration and occasional natural fissures, wood stand (2)

Provenance: Collection of Stephen Junkunc, III (d. 1978).

Note: Outstanding for the playful yet dynamic rendering of the mythical beast and its impressive size, this carving successfully captures the supernatural vitality of the creature. The notched spine and muscular body which is poised as though ready for action, along with the pronounced eyes and curled features such as its beard, tail and ears, display the technical expertise of its carver. Highly tactile in its smooth finish and impeccably modeled in the round, this carving would have been particularly favored by the jade connoisseur.

The development of sculptures of mythical creatures occurred during the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) when they began to appear in large numbers in durable materials, such as stone and jade. They were placed along the path to, and inside, tombs to pacify the elemental and supernatural forces of the world. This tradition further flourished during the Six Dynasties when immense fabulous beasts drawn from the spiritual world were produced on a grand scale outside the tombs near Nanjing. Simultaneously, an artistic tradition of creating jade animals of this type, but on a smaller scale, emerged. In contrast to the earlier two-dimensional jade carvings made for the afterlife or to adorn the individual, these creatures were modelled in the round as artistic objects and to provide the owner with a constant and concrete realization of the powerful supernatural forces in the world. As a result, carvings of mythical creatures continued to abound throughout Chinese history, of which the present is an exquisite example.

A number of carvings of recumbent mythical creatures rendered in a similar stylized manner include a closely related example, but with the head turned, published in Compendium of the Cultural Relics in the Collection of the Summer Palace, Beijing, 2018, pp 98-99 (fig. 1); and a smaller forward-facing version, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, included in Denise Leidy et. al., 'Chinese Decorative Arts', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Summer 1997, p. 25.

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A Yellow and Russet Jade Carving of a Mythical Beast, Qianlong period (1736-1795), , published in Compendium of the Cultural Relics in the Collection of the Summer Palace, Beijing, 2018, pp 98-99.

Compare also the exaggerated facial features and body of a jade mythical creature, in the Qing Court Collection and still in Beijing, included in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Jadeware III, Hong Kong, 1995, pl. 93; another, attributed to the Ming period, published in Jadewares Collected by Tianjin Museum, Beijing, 2012, pl. 173, together with a seated version, pl. 172; another sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 3rd June 2015, lot 3188; and another, from the Muwen Tang Collection, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 1st December 2016, lot 38.

INDIAN, HIMALAYAN & SOUTHEAST ASIAN WORKS OF ART
Auction Total: $3.3 Million

The afternoon closed with a thoughtfully curated collection of superlative examples of Himalayan sculpture, superb Southeast Asian & Indian sculptures, and fine Indian miniature paintings, totaling $3.3 million. The auction was led by A Gilt Copper Figure of Avalokiteshvara dating to the 9/10th-century from Nepal that achieved $830,700 – surpassing its $500,000 high estimate. A rare discovery piece, the work appeared on the market for the first time in nearly a century, after it was last acquired by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller in 1922. Other highlights in the sale included an exquisitely carved 12th Century Pala stone sculpture of Surya from a private Japanese Collection that soared past its $50,000 high estimate and sold for $126,000. A beautifully crafted 17th Century Tibetan silver image of the revered Fifth Sharmapa shattered its $50,000 high estimate to achieve a price of $252,000. Indian paintings in the sale performed particularly well, with a rare 18th Century scene of A Nawab and his Retainers in Procession from Murshidabad selling for $88,200 against its $50,000 low estimate and a similarly rare, large 18th Century watercolor of the View of the River Ganges near Currah by artist William Daniell which sailed past its $60,000 high estimate to achieve $100,800.

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Lot 322. A Gilt Copper Figure of Avalokiteshvara, Nepal, 9th-10th-century. Height 10 ½ in. (26.7 cm). Estimate: 300,000 - 500,000 USD. Lot sold $30,700 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

the bodhisattva of compassion seated on a wide lotus petal throne, the top incised with the motif of lotus pods, luxuriously positioned in sattvaparyankasana, wearing a shawl drawn across the body and falling in pleats over the left shoulder, the dhoti held in place by an ornamented waist band wrapping around the legs in a chased striated pattern, with gem set armbands set high on the shoulders, a necklace with attached pendants, and lotus-form earrings resting on the shoulders, the left hand supporting his weight from behind and holding the stalk of a lotus that follows the curve of the arm with a lotus blossoming over the left shoulder, the head encircled in an aureole decorated in swirling flames

Himalayan Art Resources item no. 13744..

Provenance: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, acquired from Dudley James, New York, 1922.

Note: From the seat of a lotus throne, Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, outstretches his hand in the gesture that signifies benevolence and charity. A principal deity that arose in tandem with the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, Avalokiteshvara expresses the foundational tenets of the religion by postponing his own enlightenment in order to continually guide others into liberation from suffering. His earthly activity is shown in his princely attire of crown and jewelry and his relaxed posture, while simultaneously his inward meditative gaze and the Buddha Amitabha standing in effigy in his crown suggests his spiritual transcendence. Like the stalk of the lotus rising from his left hand and blooming over his shoulder, Avalokiteshvara arises from the murky waters of existence as a pure and perfect being.

The Mahayana tradition of Buddhism gained prominence in India during the Gupta Empire, and after the Licchavis’s political matrimony with the Gupta rulers had collapsed, they left India carrying Indic culture and religious practices with them into the Kathmandu Valley. Avalokiteshvara, colloquially known in Nepal as Padmapani, “Lotus Holder”, was assimilated into the Newari culture beginning in the 6th Century, and carried a popularity superseded only by the Buddha. Over time, the impassioned worship of the deity in the local culture gave rise to a visual syncretism, blending the initial influences of the Gupta dynasty and Pala dynasty into a more distinctive Newari style. Later depictions show the deity standing, hips swaying to the side, in the most recognized and repeated form of the deity in Nepal. The present sculpture, though, is a rare and early example showing the dominating features of the Gupta and Pala styles as they made their way into the expert hands of Newari metalworkers.

The Gupta dynasty, spanning the 4th to the 6th centuries, was known for its sensual features and harmonious contours which strongly influenced Nepalese artistic traditions. Two examples of Gupta style bronzes, both standing images of the Buddha (see U. von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronze, Hong Kong, 1981, pl. 45E and the Metropolitan of Art (acc. no. 69.222)), allude to the same naturalistic flexion of the body as depicted in the Nepal Padmapani. All show a taut musculature around the torso – an assured physicality that captures the fluid and graceful rendering of the body portrayed during the Gupta dynasty. Quiescence and introspection characterizes the face and can be compared to the standing Sarnath figure of Khasarpana Avalokiteshvara in the National Museum in Delhi (see S. L. Huntington, The Art of Ancient India, New York, 1985, pl. 10:22) In each a remote and inwardly thoughtful expression is emphasized by broad arching eyebrows over wide lowered lids, prominent aquiline noses as well as protruding lower lips with softened corners.

 

DT237

 Standing Buddha Offering Protection, Gupta period, late 5th century, India (Uttar Pradesh, Mathura). Red sandstone. H. 33 11/16 in. (85.5 cm); W. 16 3/4 in. (42.5 cm); D. 6 1/2 in. (16.5 cm). Purchase, Enid A. Haupt Gift, 1979, 1979.6. © 2000–2020 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Buddha Offering Protection, Gupta period, late 6th–early 7th century, India (probably Bihar). Copper alloy. H. 18 1/2 in. (47 cm); W. 6 1/8 in. (15.6 cm); D. 5 5/8 in. (14.3 cm). Purchase, Florance Waterbury Bequest, 1969, 69.222. © 2000–2020 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The later Northeastern influences from the Pala dynasty overlay the lithe contours of the Gupta style with decorative features, adding richness, movement and ornamentation. A 9th Century Pala Avalokiteshvara from the Nalanda Museum (N. Ranjan Ray, Eastern Indian Bronzes, India 1986, pl. 86) shows an identical crown style – the tripartite diadem with a smaller central ornament allowing for the coiffure of matted hair to accentuate the effigy of Buddha Amitabha as the principle focus. Moreover, the styling of the robes, particularly the draping folds over the left shoulder, the armbands placed high up along the arms and the flaming halo behind the head show resonances closely linked with the Nepal Padmapani. Another Pala bronze depicting Vajrapani in the National Museum in Delhi (acc. no. 47-38) shows corresponding treatment in the striped pattern of the dhoti, the styling of the waistband with a rosette clasp and a similar wide circular shaped base incised with lotus pods.

DP702345

 

Vishnu Flanked by His Personified Attributes, Pala period, early 9th century, India (Bihar). Bronze. H. 20 3/4 in. (52.7 cm). Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, 2015, 2015.500.4.10. © 2000–2020 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

Late Licchavi works, such as the Nepal Padmapani, although heavily relying on their Indian counterparts, are consummately fashioned with the adeptness of Newari metalworking techniques. The Padmapani shows a harmony amongst all its elements, a skill mastered by the Newari craftsmen. A seated Maitreya of the same period (see P. Pal, The Sensuous Immortals: A Selection of Sculptures from the Pan-Asian Collection, Los Angeles, 1977, fig. 95A), equally features a unifying effect between the contouring of the body, patterning of incised lines and ornamental details. The warm tones of the copper and thin layering of gilding on top, indicative of the Newari craft, renders the piece with a rich and luxuriant glow.

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Seated Maitreya, Nepal, , 9th-10th-century, in J. Casey, Et Al., Divine Presence: Arts of India and The Himalayas, 2003, p. 106-107, pl. 28.

In effect, Padmapani shows a naturalism that balances multiple extremes: expression and restraint; movement and stillness; earthiness and transcendence. This equilibrium can be seen in every feature of the piece. The supple flesh of the fingers open out, while the thumb stays folded towards the palm. The body gently sways to the side while the head gently tilts in the opposite direction. The lotus leaves of the wide base open fully along the bottom, but their tips delicately curl back towards the deity. The flames around the halo swirl with energy but all move in the same direction, framing the tall crown and face of Avalokiteshvara. The lotus stalk rises and contours the curve of the figure’s arm, while the fully bloomed lotus rests over the deity's shoulder. The subtle play between these elements and each other draws the viewer, or what would have been a devotee, into a rich atmosphere of both warmth and serenity.

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Left to right: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr.; The Eyrie (images courtesy of The Rockefeller Archives).

This sculpture was purchased in 1922 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, at a time when little was known of Nepal or the Kathmandu Valley in the West. This is clear from the 1922 invoice, where it is described as a “Sung bronze Figure, seated in Indian style”. It is likely that the Padmapani was transported, as many images from Nepal were, to Tibet, and eventually into China. We know from the Rockefeller Archives that our Padmapani was originally housed in The Eyrie, a summer home built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1910 in Seal Harbour Maine, which no longer exists.

 

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 Lot 350. A black stone stele depicting Surya, India, Pala period, 12th Century. Height 33 in. (84 cm). Estimate: 30,000 - 50,000 USD. Lot sold 126,000 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

standing in sampada and holding two lotus flowers, wearing a diaphanous pleated dhoti, beaded upavita, foliate collar, circular ear ornaments, the bearded Pingala to his right and the youthful Danda to his left, rampant viyalas trampling elephants in the side panels, two flying apsaras bearing garlands flanking a kirttimukha mask above, the faceted pedestal carved showing the seven horses drawing his celestial chariot.

Provenance: Collection of a Japanese Diplomat, acquired in Bangladesh in the early 1970s.

Note: The sun god here is represented in his characteristic frontal posture, the deity dominating the composition, surrounded with his many attendants. Surya is displayed with the characteristic richness and detailed elaboration of the style as seen in later Pala stone sculptures. For another example showing Surya with ornate detailing, see S.L. and J.C. Huntington, Leaves from a Bodhi Tree: The Art of Pala India (8th-12th centuries) and Its International Legacy, Seattle, 1990, cat. 40.

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Lot 311. A silver figure of the Fifth Sharmapa, Konchok Yanglak, Tibet, 17th century. Height 7 ⅞ in. (20 cm)Estimate: 30,000 - 50,000 USD. Lot sold 252,000 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

the lama seated in meditation posture on a cushion base, with the right hand resting on his knee and the left hand holding a flaming jewel, wearing robes of a monastic decorated with incised borders of clouds and foliate patterns, his eyes cast downward in meditative concentration, the red hat of the Shamar lineage crowning his head, showing the three-jeweled emblem illustrated on the front flanked by cloud patterns and topped with the crescent sun and moon pattern above.

Himalayan Art Resources item no. 13715.

Provenance: William H. Wolff, Inc., 1977.

Note: The inscription at the base of the sculpture identifies this figure as the Fifth Sharmapa, Konchok Yanglak: ‘Homage to the red hat holder Konchok Yanglak! Mangalam’ (ཞྭ་དམར་ཅོད་པན་འཛིན་པ་དཀོན་མཆོག་ཡན་ལག་ལ་ན་མོ་མངྒ་ལཾ།). The Fifth Sharmapa (1525 - 1583) was born in the Kongpo district and formally enthroned by the Eighth Karmapa, Mikyo Dorje (1507–1554) as the reincarnate of the red hat lineage. Having completed his studies by the age of twelve, "his fame for learning, discipline, and kindness soon spread widely." (D. P. Jackson, Patron and Painter: Situ Panchen and the Revival of the Encampment Style, p 90) It was the Fifth Sharmapa who later led the enthronement of the Ninth Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorje (1556-1603) and furthermore, served as his primary teacher.

In addition to his scholastic and spiritual accomplishments, the Fifth Sharmapa involved himself in building programs of temples and the commissioning of sacred art, supporting the artist Namkha Tashi, the founder of the Gardri painting school. 

Konchok Yanglak's portrait is recognizable in paintings and sculpture alike from his slender physique, his elongated oval shaped face and enlarged ears. Here, cast in silver, a rare choice for Tibetan portraits, the Sharmapa is shown in meditation seated poised on a wide cushion with his left hand cradling a flaming jewel. In another example illustrated on Himalayan Art Resource, item no. 65561, the Fifth Sharmapa similarly holds a triratna in his left hand.

A 16th/17th Century portrait from the Nyingjei Lam Collection also portrays the Sharmapa in a silver cast. As noted by Weldon and Casey, the primary examples of silver cast portraits are of the Kagyu order, seeming to suggest their preference for this particular style of casting. (D. Weldon and J. C. Singer, The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet, pl. 49, p. 190). Another silver cast depicting the Ninth Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorje (1554-1603) (ibid., pl. 48) and showing similarity in style is dated by inscription to 1598.

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Lot 368. A Nawab and his Retainers in Procession, India, Murshidabad, circa 1760-1770, Opaque watercolor on paper heightened with gold, image: 10 ⅛ by 13 ⅛ in. (25.7 by 33.3 cm), folio: 10 ¾ by 13 in. (27.31 by 33 cm), unframed. Estimate: 50,000 - 70,000 USD. Lot sold 88,200 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

ProvenanceGifted by Stuart Cary Welch, circa 1966.

NoteThis rare and remarkable painting depicts a stately procession slowly making its way across a landscape bearing timeless vignettes of rural Bengal, rendered in infinite detail.

In the foreground farmers plow their fields and tend their crop while herds of cows and goats graze serenely. The procession itself is seen at the center of the picture, moving from left to right in a dignified cadence with a nawab on a canopied elephant accompanied by riders on horseback, soldiers on foot, noblemen on caparisoned elephants and horseback and even a pair of camels at the front of the train. At the center is a cloth covered litter no doubt bearing a precious cargo of noble ladies, sheltered from prying eyes. The palanquin is surrounded by a throng of attendant figures bearing swords and shields and dressed in fine white muslin jamas, ubiquitous in the humid climate of Bengal. Riders at the front of the train point spears at a target off-scene, as a horseman gallops forward on the right. One of the horsemen bringing up the rear holds a banner with a meen a’lam or fish-shaped standard. 

Above the procession, on the upper left, are a group of figures, so delicately drawn as to be barely discernible, sheltering from the midday heat in a grove of shady trees. In the farther distance hunting preparations take place near a pond filled with waterfowl. Beyond gently sloping hills, tall palm trees, some with bent trunks, break the horizon line, with puffy clouds floating beyond.

This extremely fine painting from Murshidabad displays elements of naturalism – evidenced in the detailed depiction of the land and people – as well as perspective, with the elements of the landscape disappearing to a vanishing point. Another very similar composition, possibly by the same artist(s), from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection, was sold at Sotheby's London, May 31, 2011, lot 109.  For two other relatable examples in the British Library, London, see T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, pps. 200 and 489, cat. 374 i & ii.

Robert Skelton in a personal correspondence has remarked that the style of this artist/workshop recalls the work of Dip Chand. Based on the historical record we might surmise that the Nawab pictured herein is Najm ud-daula, son of Mir Ja'far, who ruled as a dedicated British vassal. For another painting from Murshidabad now in the collection of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, see L. Leach, Mughal and other Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, vol. 2, no. 7.103, pp. 768, 788-9

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Lot 382. William Daniell, View of the River Ganges near Currah, December 1788Watercolor on paper.Signed 'W Daniell Jan. 7, 1804' lower left, 25 ¼ by 37¼ in. (64.1 by 94.6 cm). Estimate: 60,000 - 80,000 USD. Lot sold 100,800 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

Provenance: Reg and Philip Remington, London, 1993.

NoteThe large watercolor picturing a serene riverbank with a group of cows ambling down to the water’s edge in the company of bathers at a nearby ghat. Sailboats hug the winding riverbank while a fisherman paddles nearby. Beyond a copse of trees behind the ghat is a winding road leading up to a temple on the bluffs above. The scene is set on the banks of the Ganges near the Fort of Kara (Currah).

This marvelous watercolor by the English artist William Daniell, was painted during his trip to India in the years 1786-94 accompanied by his uncle and collaborator Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) who was a member of the Royal Academy. Notable was their celebrated series of 144 aquatints "Oriental Scenery" published in six parts in London from 1795 to 1807, which was based upon their depictions of picturesque Indian landscape views executed in watercolor and pencil sketches. William Daniell was elected a full member of the Royal Academy on February 9, 1822.

The two artists often took notes of their observations and recorded these in their diaries. Regarding Currah, Daniell noted, "The banks of the Ganges are here very lofty, steep, and picturesque; but are subject to considerable alterations in the rainy season, as the river then rises to the height of thirty feet.”

Mildred Archer mentions that, "Kara was a sacred place in early Hindu days. It was conquered by the Muslims in 1194 and became a seat of government until the present fort and city of Allahabad were built by Akbar in 1583 as the new administrative centre. Ruins of the old city extended along the river bank for 2 miles." (M. Archer, Early Views of India, London 1980, no. 26)

Very relatable scenes in aquatint were published by the Daniells as follows: "Near the Fort of Currah on the River Ganges," Plate 18 (dated 1801) and Plate 21 (dated 1796) from "Oriental Scenery. Twenty Four Views In Hindoostan" By William and Thomas Daniell (Royal Academy 18/2381).

An oil painting of a related scene by William Daniell was sold at Christie’s London, September 27, 2001, lot 10, signed and inscribed with an old label on the verso: "Near Curah Manickpore on the Ganges - with native females carrying away the water from the sacred stream - W. Daniell R.A." Pencil and watercolor sketches of Currah were featured in the same sale as Lots 3 and 4.

The present large watercolor is one of the finest and most atmospheric of Daniell's renderings to appear at auction. For further reference on scenes from India painted by Thomas and William Daniell, see B. N. Goswamy, Daniells’ India: Views from the Eighteenth Century, New Delhi, 2013.

IMPORTANT CHINESE ART
Auction Total: $22.4 Million

This season’s various-owner sale of Important Chinese Art totaled $22.4 million – well-exceeding its $16.9 million high estimate. The auction was led by An Exceptionally Rare and Important Gold, Silver and Glass-Embellished Bronze Vessel, which sold to applause for $8.3 million – more than double its $3.5 million high estimate, following a 12-minute bidding battle between five bidders. Individually designed and likely created for a royal patron, the present fang hu was formerly in the collection of Belgian industrialist, banker and famous art collector Adolphe Stoclet. Representing the peak of luxury in the Warring States period, vessels decorated in the most ambitious and flamboyant style ever devised for Chinese bronzes are so exceedingly rare that the technique is virtually unknown, and almost nothing has been published about this important aspect of the bronze craft, since examples are impossible to see. The present bronze is therefore of major importance for the history of Chinese bronzes, metal technology, and glass making.

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Lot 578. An Exceptionally Rare and Important Gold, Silver and Glass-Embellished Bronze Vessel, fanghuWarring States period, 4th-3rd century BC. Height 13¾ in., 35.1 cm. Estimate: 2,500,000 - 3,500,000 USD. Lot sold 8,307,000 USD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

of square section, set atop a straight foot with the swelling belly rising to a slightly flaring neck and surmounted by a slightly domed cover set with four bird-shaped finials, each side of the vessel decorated with a complex design of diamond-shaped glass plaques set into cast recesses of conforming shape, surrounded by wide bands of enlaced lines and volutes inlaid in silver, with raised circular bosses embellished with gold-sheet set at regular intervals, on two sides the shoulder set with an animal mask handle suspending a loose ring, with glass plaque and silver inlay, and raised bosses, the dark brown patina with green malachite encrustation (2).

Provenance: Collection of Adolphe (1871-1949) and Suzanne (1874-1949) Stoclet, and thence by descent.
European Private Collection.
 
Literature: Albert J. Koop, Early Chinese Bronzes, London, 1924, pl. 103 A.
C.G. Seligman & H.C. Beck, ‘Far Eastern Glass: Some Western Origins’, The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities Stockholm Bulletin, no. 10, 1938, pp. 1-64, pl. X.
 
Exhibited: International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935, cat. no. 406.

Bronze, Gold, Silver, Glass – Opulence in the Warring States Period

 

Regina Krahl

 

This bronze vessel with its embellishments in gold, silver and polychrome glass, individually designed and created probably for some royal patron, must have represented the peak of luxury in the Warring States period (475-221 BC). Vessels decorated in this most ambitious and flamboyant style ever devised for Chinese bronzes are so exceedingly rare, that the technique is virtually unknown and almost nothing has been published about this important aspect of the bronze craft, since examples are virtually impossible to see. Of only three other known bronze vessels with related glass inlays, only one piece, excavated in China, but of slightly later date, has been made widely public and has thus become famous; the other two came onto the market around 1930, entered Japanese collections, but have hardly been publicly shown ever since. The present piece, too, has not been published or exhibited since 1938. Connoisseurs of Chinese art and even specialists in archaic Chinese bronzes may therefore feel they have never seen anything like it.

Inlaid bronzes began to be made in the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC). While the early copper inlays that were added to the mold before the bronze was cast, were limited to fairly stiff cut-out silhouettes, other techniques were soon experimented with in order to create more vivid designs. The preferred method became incising into the bronze after casting, where the grooves were then filled with precious metals. The present piece is inlaid with complex silver designs, consisting of lively enlaced lines and volutes. They can be seen as the bronze craftsmen’s masterful answer to the concurrent fashion for fluid painted decoration on contemporary lacquer wares, which are here superbly echoed in bronze.

The gold bosses of our vessel were created by applying rather thickly hammered sheet gold onto raised knobs, rather than through mercury gilding, as was quite commonly used at the time, but which would have added only a much thinner layer of the precious metal. The bosses themselves appear to have been separately added to the cast bronze before being covered with gold.

In addition to the use of gold, silver and copper to enrich the monochrome bronze surface, Warring States vessels were sometimes inlaid with pieces of malachite and turquoise which provided bright color, but were very small. Much more successful in adding color and sparkle was the inlay with polychrome glass plaques. Yet it was clearly also the most complex and demanding method, not only on account of the extreme rarity and preciousness of glass at the time, but also because it required the cooperation of artisans working in very different media, versed in different techniques that required different skills. To receive the glass plaques, the bronze was cast with specially shaped recesses, which explains the walls’ unusual thickness and the vessel’s remarkable weight. The glass plaques then had to be created to fit.

Glass was still hardly in use at the time, known mainly in form of imported beads, and undoubtedly an extravagant choice for embellishing a bronze. Glass beads with ‘eye’ motifs in contrasting colors had been made particularly in Egypt but also in many other Central, Middle, Near Eastern and Western countries from the mid-second millennium BC onwards and were universally popular as talismans. At least since the Warring States period, some of these foreign beads had found their way into China, and it did not take long before they were reproduced locally. At first, they were perhaps copied in form of pottery beads with inlaid glass ‘eyes’, but soon as pure glass ‘eye beads’.[1] Visually, Chinese glass beads are difficult to distinguish from those made abroad, but since they differ in composition, chemical tests have confirmed that both existed side by side in the Warring States period.

The present bronze with its application of gold and silver and its lavish use of ‘eye’-decorated glass plaques is therefore not only of major importance for the history of Chinese bronzes and Chinese metal technology, but equally for the history of Chinese glass making. Its triangular and lozenge-shaped plaques with contrasting ’eye’ patterns must have been custom-made near the bronze foundry to suit the requirements of the vessel. They were specially designed, not only in order to fit in shape, but also in design: the usually circular or oval white inlays defining the ‘eyes’ were here turned into lozenges and triangles that evenly fill the surface of the angular or pointed glass plaques. By creating a geometric pattern that no longer immediately evokes eyes, the Chinese craftsmen freely adjusted the foreign style to suit their own purpose.

The closest vessels known to exist are a pair of hu of similar date and style, recorded as having been excavated at Jincun near Luoyang in Henan province, where important works of the late Warring States period were excavated around 1930, and are since preserved in Japan. These two vessels, which are larger (probably 42.5 cm, but published figures vary) and of circular section, are decorated in a very similar way with an overall diaper design with gold bosses and silver designs and lozenge-shaped and triangular glass ‘eye plaques’, although the latter show more complex floral patterns. These important works of art are both known from old photographs only and are virtually unknown outside Japan. Both were originally in the collection of Asano Umekichi, Osaka. One has been designated ‘Important Cultural Property’, entered the collection of Baron Hosokawa Moritatsu and is now in the Eisei Bunko, Tokyo (fig. 1).[2] The subsequent history and present whereabouts of the companion jar are unknown (fig. 2).[3] Yūzō Sugimura describes the Hosokawa jar as “An example of the finest workmanship of late Chou [Zhou] times, probably a family treasure of one of the kings or feudal rulers of the time”.[4] Max Loehr, in discussing “this dazzling, round Hu”, suggests as its date the period between about 500 and 300 BC.[5]

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Fig. 1. A gold, silver and glass-embellished hu, Warring States period. © Eisei Bunko, Tokyo.

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Fig. 2. A gold, silver and glass-embellished hu, Warring States PERIOD AFTER Umehara Sueji, rakuyō Kinson Kobo Shūei/Selection Of Tomb Finds From Lo-Yang, Chin-Ts’un, Kyoto, Rev. Ed. 1944, Pl. 18.

The third comparable vessel known to have survived is probably of slightly later date: the famous royal gilt and silvered bronze jar with glass inlays from the tomb of Liu Sheng, Prince Jing of Zhongshan, who died in 113 BC (fig. 3). This massive vessel, now in the Hebei Provincial Museum, Shijiazhuang, nearly 60 cm high and weighing 16.25 kg, is considered unique. It is gilded and silvered, shows silver bosses at the intersections of its diaper design and is also inlaid with lozenge-shaped and triangular glass ‘eye plaques’.[6] Liu Sheng was a son of the Western Han Emperor Jing Di (r. 154-141 BC) and himself ruled over Zhongshan principality. He was most lavishly buried in a jade burial suit in a sumptuously appointed tomb in Mancheng county, Hebei province, and his glass-inlaid bronze hu is inscribed with a palace name.

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Fig. 3. Gilt and silvered bronze jar with glass inlays, excavated in the Mancheng Han tombs. Western Han dynasty. Hebei Museum, Hebei. Photography by Zhang Hui.

Chinese glass beads have been discovered at some of China’s most prestigious archaeological sites of the Warring States period. A series of beads with an ‘eye’ pattern formed of blue dots enclosed by dark brownish rings, on fields of white that are set into a turquoise-blue ground, very similar to the design on the glass plaques of our fang hu, has been found, for example, in the important fifth-century BC tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng at Leigudun, Suixian, Hubei province (fig. 4).[7] Glass pieces other than these foreign-inspired beads were exceedingly rare in the Warring States period. This type of polychrome glass (liuli) with inlaid ‘eye’ and related patterns was in China made for an extremely short period and obviously enjoyed very high prestige.

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 Fig. 4. Glass beads, excavated from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, Warring States period. Hubei Museum, Hubei.

Experiments were also made with inlaying glass paste into pottery to create replicas of glass-inlaid bronzes such as the present vessel, probably at the fraction of the cost.[8] Surviving examples are, however, also extremely rare. Those that exist, like a jar in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig. 5),[9] show related grid designs with bosses at the intersections. These glass-paste pottery vessels in turn are believed to be the direct antecedents of China’s lead-glazed ceramics.

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Fig. 5. Covered jar (guan), Qin dynasty, 3rd century B.C. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Charles Bain Hoyt -- Chales Bain Hoyt Collection. 50.1841. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Glass was employed much more frequently from the Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220) onwards, but then mostly monochrome glass (boli) was produced that could be used in place of jade or other colored stones. Minor glass inlays in form of small monochrome dots simulating semi-precious stones are also found on a few bronze vessels: A hu without cover, for example, inlaid in a very different style with gold, silver, turquoise and small circular pieces of red glass probably meant to simulate agate, was excavated in Baoji, Shaanxi, and is now in the Baoji Municipal Museum; [10] and a silver-inlaid egg-shaped bronze dui tripod in the British Museum, London, is also believed to have featured small dots of glass.[11] Glass inlays are otherwise known only from small bronze objects such as belt hooks. Since this much simpler form of glass was used to replicate more expensive materials, its prestige in the Han dynasty waned.

The basic shape of our fang hu is well known from late Warring States and early Western Han (206 BC – AD 9) bronzes, although its depressed, bulging proportions and its pointed, pyramidal cover are unusual. A pair of fang hu of more elongated form and with pyramidal covers with a flat, ‘cut-off’ tip, also decorated with diaper designs arranged around gold bosses, were inlaid with niello and originally perhaps semi-precious stones but no glass; one of them, from the collection of Eric Lidow is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (fig. 6)[12], the other, from the collection of Arthur B. Michael and later in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, was sold in our New York rooms, 20th March 2007, lot 508 (fig. 7).[13] Another related fang hu without cover, also with metal-inlaid diaper design but with less prominent gold bosses, is in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (fig. 8),[14] and a very similar vessel is depicted in a woodblock illustration in the catalogue of bronzes in the imperial collection compiled for the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1795), Xi Qing gu jian (fig. 9).[15]

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Fig. 6. Lidded square wine storage jar (fang hu) with lozenges and knobs, Late Eastern Zhou dynasty, Early or Middle Warring States PERIOD, about 481- 300 B.C. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles.

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Fig. 7. A rare copper-inlaid archaic bronze wine vessel with gilt bosses (fang hu), Warring States period, 4th century B.C. Sotheby’s New York, 20th march 2007, lot 508.

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Fig. 8 Ritual Wine vessel (fang hu), prob. 400–300 BCE. China. Warring States period (c. 475–221 BCE). Bronze with copper, gold, silver, and stone inlays. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery Brundage Collection, B62b38. Photograph © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

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Fig. 9, Liang Shizheng Et Al., Xi Qing Gu Jian, 1755, Vol. 20: Hu, No. 22.

Sacrificial bronze vessels were of very high importance in Zhou (1045-221 BC) society. They were used during sacrificial ceremonies to offer food and wine to the ancestors to obtain their protection. As the offerings were subsequently jointly consumed at ritual banquets, they also served to bond family clans. A vessel such as the present fang hu might have been used to contain wine in such ceremonies that were held at ancestral temples. The Liji [Classic of Rites], one of China’s classic Confucian texts on Zhou dynasty rites, written between the Warring States and early Han period, states about sacrificial offerings made to the Duke of Zhou in the great ancestral temple: “the bronze zun vessels employed were those cast in the forms of the bull victim, or an elephant, and hills; the vessel for fragrant wine was the one with gilt eyes on it”.[16] ‘Gilt eyes’ (huang mu) may well refer to a decoration as seen on the present fang hu and its companion pieces.

A century ago, the present fang hu was in the collection of Adolphe Stoclet (1871-1949), a Belgian industrialist, banker and famous art collector, whose villa in Brussels had been commissioned, down to the last detail, from Josef Hoffman (1870-1956), important architect and co-founder of the influential art and design cooperative, Wiener Werkstätte. It is considered the most important intact ensemble preserved from the ‘Jugendstil’ period of the early twentieth century and inscribed by UNESCO as a world heritage site. Stoclet collected Western as well as non-Western art from around the world, including many major Chinese works. The piece is visible in a photograph of a room in Stoclet’s house, taken in 1917 (fig. 10). In 1935, Stoclet lent the present bronze together with twenty-seven other Chinese works of art to the International Exhibition of Chinese Art at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the most important exhibition of Chinese art ever mounted (fig. 11).

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Fig. 10. The Fang Hu photographed in the Stoclet Palace, Brussels, 1917.© Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.

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Fig 11, The fang hu illustrated in the catalogue for the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935-36, cat. no. 406.

[1] Zhongguo meishu quanji. Gongyi meishu bian [Complete series on Chinese art. Arts and crafts section], vol. 10: Jin yin boli falang qi [Gold, silver, glass and enamel wares], Beijing, 1987, pls 201-204; and Shen Congwen & Li Zhitan, Boli shihua/History of Glassware, Shenyang, 2005, pls 1-7.

[2] The same photographs have been published in Seiichi Mizuno, Bronzes and Jades of Ancient China, Tokyo, 1959, col. pl. 12 and pl. 176 E; in Yūzō Sugimura, Chinese Sculpture, Bronzes and Jades in Japanese Collections, Honolulu, 1966, part 3, col. pl. 2 and pl. 40; in the exhibition catalogue Chūgoku sanzen nen: bi no bi/Select Works of Ancient Chinese Art, Mitsukoshi, Tokyo, 1973, cat. no. 16; in Li Xueqin, ed., Zhongguo meishu quanji: Gongyi meishu bian [Complete series on Chinese art: Arts and crafts section], vol. 5: Qingtong qi [Bronzes], vol. 2, Beijing, 1986, pl. 119; and elsewhere.

[3] Umehara Sueji, Rakuyō Kinson kobo shūei/Selection of Tomb Finds from Lo-yang, Chin-ts’un, Kyoto, rev. ed. 1944, pls 18 and 19.

[4] Sugimura, loc.cit.

[5] Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China, exhibition catalogue, The Asia Society, New York, 1968, p. 154.

[6] The jar has been frequently published, for example, in Wenhua Da Geming qijian chutu wenwu [Cultural relics excavated during the Great Cultural Revolution], Beijing, 1972, p. 9; in Qian Hao, Chen Heyi & Ru Suichu, Out of China’s Earth. Archaeological Discoveries in the People’s Republic of China, New York and Beijing, 1981, pl. 191; and in Peng Qingyun, ed., Zhongguo wenwu jinghua da cidian: Qingtong juan [Encyclopaedia of masterpieces of Chinese cultural relics: Bronze volume], Shanghai, 1995, pl. 1079.

[7] Zhongguo meishu quanji, vol. 10, op.cit., pl. 201.

[8] They are discussed in Nigel Wood & Ian C. Freestone, ‘A Preliminary Examination of a Warring States Pottery Jar with So-called “Glass-Paste” Decoration, in Guo Jingkun, ed., Science and Technology of Ancient Ceramics 3: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Ancient Ceramics, Shanghai, 1995,, pp. 12-17; and in Hsieh [Xie] Mingliang, ‘Zhongguo chuqi jianyou taoqi xin ciliao [New material on early Chinese lead-glazed pottery], Gugong wenwu yuekan/The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art, no. 309, December 2008, pp. 28-37.

[9Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco, 1980–82, vol. 10, col. pl. 65.

[10] Published in Li Xueqin, op.cit., pl. 171; and Peng Qingyun, op.cit., pl. 877.

[11] Jessica Rawson, ed., The British Museum Book of Chinese Art, London, 1992, p. 72, fig. 45.

[12] Illustrated in Jenny F. So. Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections. New York, 1995, p. 62, fig. 110.

[13] It was included, for example, by Max Loehr in the exhibition Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age Chinaop.cit., cat. no. 69.

[14] So, op.cit., p. 63, fig. 112.

[15] Liang Shizheng et al., Xi Qing gu jian, 1755, vol. 20: hu, no. 22.

[16] In the translation of James Legge, Li Chi: Book of Rites, 2 vols, New York, 1967 (1885), chapter Mingtangwei; see Liu Yang, ‘To Please Those on High: Ritual and Art in Ancient China’, in Liu Yang, ed., Homage to the Ancestors: Ritual Art from the Chu Kingdom, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2011, p. 34.

THE HUNDRED ANTIQUES: FINE & DECORATIVE ASIAN ART
Auction 18 – 29 September
Open for bidding online from 18 – 29 September, The Hundred Antiques: Fine & Decorative Asian Art features over 170 Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian works of art and paintings. Spanning centuries, highlights include a group of famille-noire porcelains formerly in the collection of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and deaccessioned by a Southern institution, led by a Famille-Noire 'Bird And Flower' Pear-Shaped Vase (estimate $8/12,000); Qing dynasty glass from a California private collection, led by a Royal Blue Faceted Glass Jar and Cover (estimate $4/6,000); ‘hongmu’ furniture from the J.T. Tai & Co. Foundation, led by 'Hongmu' And Burlwood Scroll Back Armchair (estimate $3/5,000), a rare Tang dynasty gilt-bronze Buddhist figure (estimate $5/7,000), and a Qing dynasty 19th century gilt-copper stupa (estimate $1,500/2,000).

New room presents works related to the man who built the Mauritshuis

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Jan de Baen, Portrait of Johan Maurits (1604-1679), Count of Nassau-Siegen, Founder of the Mauritshuis, c. 1668 - 1670© 2020 Mauritshuis

THE HAGUE.- From today, the Mauritshuis in The Hague presents a new permanent display in one of the rooms of the museum. The room contains works related to Johan Maurits, Count of Nassau-Siegen and the man who built the Mauritshuis in the 17th century. The Mauritshuis previously considered Johan Maurits primarily from an art historical perspective; this new display also tells the story of his role as governor of the colony Dutch Brazil and in the transatlantic slave trade. In addition to the new museum room, attention will also focus on the research from the recently-launched project ‘Revisiting Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits’. In a recent article written by two Mauritshuis researchers, new facts about Johan Maurits and his role in the slave trade were revealed. As well as these findings, the museum today also announces the names of the four researchers who will examine different aspects of Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits over the coming period.

Mrs Martine Gosselink, director of the Mauritshuis: ‘We are regularly asked whether the Mauritshuis is going to change its name given the role that Johan Maurits played in the transatlantic slave trade. This is not something we are going to do. He was simply the owner and person who gave the Mauritshuis its name. This house doesn’t bear his name because he was considered a great hero, but because it has always been named after (Johan) Maurits. What we are going to do is to make Johan Maurits more visible in his former home to enter into the debate about slavery. We are doing this online with a series of online debates that we are organising, by facilitating research and with our own collection in a permanent room in the museum itself. Johan Maurits’s past raises questions for many, and we don’t intend to shy away from these’.

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Jan van Logteren, Full-Length Portrait of Johan Maurits (1604-1679), Count of Nassau-Siegen, 1727© 2020 Mauritshuis

The Mauritshuis and Johan Maurits
The new display in Room 8, on the first floor of the Mauritshuis, consists of eleven artworks related to Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679), Dutch Brazil and the history of the Mauritshuis as a building and museum. All the artworks in this new display – ten paintings and a sculpture – come from our own collection, but were previously dispersed throughout the building. By bringing these works together in one room, the visitor is given the opportunity at the start of their visit to the museum to form an image of the man who gave the museum its name and his background. New room texts and a reworked multimedia tour shed light on various aspects of Johan Maurits’s governorship (1636-1644) of Dutch Brazil in the service of the WIC (West-Indische Compagnie, the Dutch West India Company).

The present collection on show in the museum is not Johan Maurits's but was brought together in the 18th and 19th centuries by Stadtholder William V (1748-1806) and King William I (1772-1843).

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Adriaen Hanneman, Posthumous Portrait of Mary I Stuart (1631- 1660) with a Servant, c. 1664© 2020 Mauritshuis

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Albert Eckhout, Study of Two Brazilian Tortoises, c. 1640© 2020 Mauritshuis

Idealised image
Johan Maurits was long viewed above all as an ‘enlightened’ and tolerant governor who took artists and scientists with him to Brazil. Today attention is also given to his role in the transatlantic slave trade and the slavery system that keep the lucrative sugar mills running. Artworks from the time present an idealised image of the colony, which is why the accompanying texts focus on precisely that which is not visible. The exhibition Shifting Image – In Search of Johan Maurits (April – July 2019) previously explored the different aspects of the historical figure Johan Maurits. The new display in the museum provides a permanent focus for the story of Johan Maurits, Dutch Brazil and his relationship with the Mauritshuis.

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Frans Post, Brazilian Landscape with a House under Construction, c. 1655 - 1660© 2020 Mauritshuis

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Frans Post, View of Itamaracá Island in Brazil, 1637© 2020 Mauritshuis

 Illegal slave trade
After the exhibition Shifting Image – In Search of Johan Maurits in 2019, the Mauritshuis initiated the research project Revisiting Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits. This project focuses on historical (archival) research into Johan Maurits’s time as governor in Brazil, with an emphasis on subjects that before now have been given little attention. These include Johan Maurits’s role in the transatlantic slave trade between West and Central Africa and Brazil, a role that has previously been downplayed by various writers. In an article recently published in the journal Early American History, head of the research project Mr Erik Odegard and Mrs Carolina Monteiro (formerly junior researcher at the Mauritshuis) write that new research has established that Johan Maurits traded in people at his own expense. While the slave trade was not illegal in the eyes of the WIC, the private trade in enslaved people was. Johan Maurits smuggled enslaved Africans into Brazil and sold them on to others. He also traded a ‘gift’ of two hundred people from the king of Congo for personal gain.

Zacharias Wagner Mensenhandel in Recife ca 16371641 Afbeelding ANP AKG Kupferstichkabinett Dresden

Zacharias Wagner, Slave market in Recife , ca. 1637-1641, Image ANP/ AKG/ Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden.

Research project
The project Revisiting Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits is a broad-based study of the colony Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits. For this, a fellowship programme has been set up with the support of the Dutch 'Gieskes-Strijbis Fund', in which an international group of researchers will focus on four subjects:

1. ‘Tracing black lives in Brazil and the Dutch Atlantic’ 2. ‘Johan Maurits’s relations with the city of Salvador: war, diplomacy and cultural exchanges between Dutch Recife and Portuguese Bahia, c. 1637-1644' 3. 'Indigenous memories of the Portuguese-Dutch wars and the indigenous policies in the Portuguese Amazon’ 4. ‘The Dutch impact in fostering the trans-Atlantic links between Angola and Brazil based on slave trading activity’

Head of the research project Erik Odegaard is also working on an article about private investments from the Dutch Republic in Dutch Brazil (in sugar mills and plantations, for example). The research period runs from September 2020 until December 2021 and will culminate in various academic publications and a symposium. The fellows announced today are: Mr Mark Ponte, Mrs Irene Maria Vicente Martín, Mr André Luís Ferreira and Mr Miguel Geraldes Rodrigues.

 

Sotheby's Hong Kong Chinese Works of Art Autumn Sales to feature 'Monochrome II'

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Courtesy Sotheby's.

HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s Hong Kong presents two carefully curated Chinese Works of Art Sales to be held on 9 October 2020, Monochrome II and Important Chinese Art. Monochrome II is the sequel to the highly successful Monochrome sale held in July. Highlights include a jadeite-green glazed jar and cover from the Ming dynasty, a superb silver-streaked Nogime Temmoku bowl from the Southern Song dynasty and a magnificent huanghuali six-post canopy bed from the Ming dynasty. Important Chinese Art is a tightly curated assemblage with a focus on fine and rare imperial porcelain and works of art from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Highlights include an exquisite Yongzheng famille-rose 'peach' bowl and a gilt-bronze figure of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara from the Song dynasty.

Nicolas Chow, Chairman, Sotheby’s Asia, International Head and Chairman, Chinese Works of Art, comments, “This season is highlighted by the return of the Monochrome sale which showcases the timelessness of Chinese aesthetics. Sotheby’s is thrilled to offer again a superb selection of Ming huanghuali furniture which sparked exciting bidding wars in the previous season. We are also excited to present a collection of Qing monochrome porcelains from an esteemed private collection, a stunning group of Song dynasty black tea bowls from the Aoyama Studio collection, as well as an array of exquisite treasures across centuries.”

MONOCHROME II
Following on from the success of the debut Monochrome sale in July 2020, the sequel presents again a diverse range of exceptional artworks characterised by their timeless aesthetic and exemplifying the most refined sensibilities in Chinese art. The sale presents the second part of the distinguished collection of Ming furniture, a superb selection of Qing imperial monochrome porcelains from an important Asian private collection, selected archaic jades from the celebrated Hei-Chi collection, as well as a group of Song dynasty black tea bowls from the Aoyama Studio collection.

MING HUANGHUALI FURNITURE

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Lot 53. An Exceptional and Rare Huanghuali Six-Post Canopy Bed, Ming Dynasty, 17th Century; 226 by 156.2 by h. 226 cm. Estimate: HK$20,000,000 - 30,000,000 / US$2,580,000-3,870,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

well proportioned, the wide rectangular frame enclosing a soft-mat sleeping surface surmounting a constricted waist carved with pairs of confronting chilong divided by short bamboo-form struts, above a shaped apron carved in low relief with stylised dragons striding amidst scrolling foliage bearing lingzhi fungus, supported on four cabriole legs with animal masks at the shoulders ending in claw-and-ball feet, the six square section posts joined with five openwork panels forming a latticework gallery, each panel comprising three horizontal sections, the two front centre sections decorated with a qilin in a landscape with its head turning backward within a cartouche, the side and back centre of conforming design with sinuous dragons alternating with stylised shou medallions, all between the top section with circular chilong roundels and the lower frieze with curling chilong, the top rail reticulated with similar chilong and shou characters, the posts joined at the top by a canopy of corresponding form.

Provenance: Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, California.
Christie's New York, 19th September 1996, lot 62.
Literature: Wang Shixiang, ‘Jian yue ming lian [The beauty of minimalism. Highlights from the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture in California]’, National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art, May 1993, no. 122, p. 9.
Wang Shixiang, ‘The Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture in California’, Journal of the Classical Chinese Furniture Society, Autumn 1993, p. 51.
Wang Shixiang and Curtis Evarts, Masterpieces from the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, Chicago and San Francisco, 1995, cat. no. 11.
Wang Shixiang, Mingshi jiaju yanjiu / Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture, Beijing, 2007, p. 399, no. 7.

NoteSumptuously carved in openwork with sinuous chilong writhing around auspicious motifs, this magnificent canopy bed is a display of 17th century aristocratic splendour. Employed in the inner quarters by both men and women, beds were the focal point of the household, and six-post canopy beds were most luxurious and impressive type of bed that one could own.

This bed is discussed by the furniture scholar Wang Shixiang in Masterpieces from the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, 1995, p. 22, where he identifies a group of canopy beds exquisitely carved with closely related designs and suggests they were all produced at the same workshop in northern China. Two of these beds are illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (I), Hong Kong, 2002, pl. 2, the first at the Great Mosque of Xi’an, and the second in the Palace Museum, Beijing. A further closely related bed was included in the exhibition Beyond the Screen, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2000, cat. no. 16; and two were sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 3rd December 2008, lot 2532, and 30th November 2011, lot 3075.

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Illustration in sancai Tuhui [Assembled Pictures of The Three Realms], Ming dynasty, Wanli period edition.

While used by both men and women, canopy beds were the most used pieces of furniture in women’s apartments. 17th century households that adhered to Confucian norms confined women to the inner courtyards of a family compound, away from the front of the house where important male visitors were received and official functions took place. Bedrooms were informal rooms where women spent many of their waking hours, thus their furnishing, especially the bed, were important status symbols, indicating their position within the family.

During daytime, canopy beds were used as seats for informal leisure: a long table and footstool were placed in front of the bed for comfortably reading or eating. A few stools and chairs could be arranged around the bed for an informal gathering. At night, curtains were hanged within the bedframe to protect from drafts, mosquitoes as well as prying eyes. These curtains were carefully chosen as their colour and patterns emphasised the intricate openwork carving of the bedrail. The 17th century scholar Wen Zhenheng in his influential Chang wu zhi [Treaties on Superfluous Things], discusses which fabrics should be used on canopy beds: “Bed curtains for the winter months should be of pongee silk or of thick cotton with purple patterns. Curtains of paper or of plain-weave, spun-silk cloth are both vulgar, while gold brocaded silk curtains and those of bo silk are for the women’s quarters”.

Most importantly, beds were the place where children were conceived and their decoration is often filled with auspicious omens that reflect this function. On this bed sinuous chilong, young hornless dragons, dominate the design and represent the aspiration of conceiving meritorious sons. Auspicious clouds, rocks and lingzhi, and shou (longevity) characters were believed to bring blessings and good luck to those within. Designs on beds could also be indicative of a person’s social status. Wang Shixiang, op. cit., suggests that the motif on this bed of a qilin with his head turned backwards facing the sun, first found on Qing rank badges, could indicate that the bed once belonged to the wife of an early Qing official.

Six-post canopy beds are essentially a room within a room as their design aesthetic principles of Chinese classical architecture. Their six-post construction mimics three-bay buildings such as pavilions, where the roof is supported by posts and the lack of walls merges outdoor and inner space. The sophisticated openwork railings recall a building’s balustrade, which have the dual function of creating interest through their decoration and increasing stability. In addition, the upper panels under the canopy roof are carved to allow air circulation as the panels under the eaves of buildings.

The canopy bed has a long history in China, with the earliest example dating to the fourth century BC. A sophisticated wooden bed frames (chuang) was discovered at a tomb in Xinyang, Henan province, attributed to a ruler of the southern kingdom of Chu. These early beds were likely used with a canopy frame, such as the one excavated from the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) tomb of Prince Liu Sheng, in Mancheng, Hebei province. While the earliest surviving canopy bed dates to the 16th century, this type bed is often found illustrated in paintings. See for example the bed depicted in Gu Kaizhi’s (c. 344-406) handscroll Nushi zhen tu (The Admonitions of the court instructress), in the British Museum, London, accession no. 1903,0408,0.1; and the bed visible on the famous 10th century handscroll Han Xizai yeyan tu (The Night Revels of Han Xizai), attributed to Gu Hongzhong, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in the catalogue to the exhibition Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings 700-1900, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2013, fig. 4.

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Lot 99. An Important and Very Rare Huanghuali Table, Banzhuo, Ming Dynasty, 16th – 17th Century; 104.5 by 64.4 by h. 86.7 cm. Estimate: HK$1,200,000 - 1,800,000 / US$77,500 - 104,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

the top of standard mitre, mortise and tenon frame construction, the edge of the frame moulding downward and inward to an undulating flange simulating the edges of a lotus leaf, all above the shaped, beaded-edged apron exquisitely carved on the longer sides with a pair of phoenix soaring amidst ruyi cloud scrolls and flanking the sun, the shorter sides skilfully decorated with birds perched on floral sprigs, all resting atop four cylindrical legs terminating in baluster feet and joint to the apron and underside of the tabletop with spandrels carved in the form of sinuous dragons and ruyi-shaped braces.

Provenance: The Gangolf Geis Collection.
Christie's New York, 18th September 2003, lot 23.

Note: This exquisite table is special for its finely carved aprons and spandrels, which include a lively depiction of phoenix among clouds flanking the sun. It belongs to a highly unusual group of profusely decorated side tables, whose upper part resembles a kang table – low tables used on the heated kang. The well-known Chinese furniture scholar Wang Shixiang thus refers to them as ai zhuo zhan tui shi or 'low table with extended legs'. The abundance of carved decoration on these tables represents a clear departure from the clean and sober aesthetics more commonly associated with 17th century furniture, and demonstrates the co-existence of different furniture styles in this period.

Tables of this design are very rare and only two closely related examples appear to have been published; a table from the collection of Wang Shixiang, now in the Shanghai Museum, is illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Classic Chinese Furniture. Ming and Early Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1985, pl. 84; and one included in the exhibition Beyond the Screen. Chinese Furniture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1996, cat. no. 22.

A related design is found on square tables, including one with scroll-shaped spandrels and dragons on the apron, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Hu Desheng, A Treasury of Ming & Qing Dynasty Palace Furniture, Beijing, 2007, vol. I, pl. 166; and a table with removable legs, from the collection of Dr S.Y. Yip, sold in these rooms, 7th October 2015, lot 118.

The graceful curves of this piece, created by its undulated waist and the shaped aprons, and its decoration are imbued with a feminine quality. The long sides of the table are carved with a motif of two phoenix facing the sun (shuangfeng chaoyang), an omen for the arrival of enlightened men, while the short sides with a pair of birds perched on flowering branches. Wang Shixiang, op.cit., p. 281, suggests that the former share similarities with designs found on contemporary brocade, while the latter with polychrome porcelains of the Wanli reign (r. 1573-1620).

EARLY MING PORCELAINS

An Exceptionally Rare Jadeite-Green Glazed Jar and Cover, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period (1403-1425)

Jadeite-Green Glazed Jar and Cover, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period

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Lot 19. An Exceptionally Rare Jadeite-Green Glazed Jar and Cover, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period (1403-1425); 12 cm. Estimate: HK$10,000,000 - 15,000,000 / US$1,290,000-1,940,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

finely potted with tapered sides extending to softly rounded shoulders and rising to a short straight neck, veiled in an exquisite silky jadeite-green glaze thinning at the rim and pooling around the shoulders in a sea-green tone, suffused with a fine network of craquelure resembling silver threads across the surface, the low flat cover similarly glazed.

Provenance: An important Asian private collection.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 8th October 2009, lot 1624.
A Solitary Gem in Jadeite Green
Regina Krahl

It will be hard to find a porcelain vessel more pleasing in shape or more ravishing in colour than this small covered jar from the imperial Yongle workshops of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province. The smooth, bulging vessel with its softly rounded cover, enveloped in a luminous, glassy, blue-green tinted glaze, has a gem-like quality as encountered only in the Yongle period (1403-1424). With its superbly designed form, its outstanding material and its perfect execution, it is a masterpiece from a golden era of China's porcelain production. No other ‘jadeite green’ jar of this shape, complete with its cover, appears to be recorded; altogether only six pieces including this jar, dressed in this dazzling glaze, appear to be extant; and only two comparable jars have retained their covers, both from the Qing court collection and today preserved in the Palace Museums in Beijing and Taipei.

The reign of the Yongle Emperor, whose rule commenced in Nanjing and ended in Beijing, was marked by extraordinary innovation in technology, imagination in design, and rigorous pursuit of quality. Specially designated imperial workshops created not only porcelain, but also lacquerware, cloisonné, textiles, Buddhist gilt-bronzes and other works of art, all of unparalleled excellence, thus initiating an unprecedented flowering of China’s arts and crafts. The imperial porcelain workshops at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province increased quantity as well as quality of their production with awesome rapidity, as the excavations of the kilns’ waste heaps have documented. As new glaze colours and firing techniques, new shapes and designs were tried out, the potters' technical leap forward was so immense, that thereafter no real innovation took place for centuries, until the introduction of foreign technology from the West in the eighteenth century supplied new impulses once more. 

While many porcelains of the Yongle period were created specifically for diplomatic missions, to be distributed as imperial gifts to foreign potentates, and are characterized by larger sizes and a bolder aesthetic approach, more delicate and sophisticated wares such as this jar, were produced at the same time to cater to the needs of the imperial family and the court at large in the new palace buildings in Beijing. The present jar, which was probably designed to hold chess pieces, may have been destined for the Emperor’s private quarters towards the back of the Forbidden City. Such pieces were made with the greatest care, in very small numbers.

Many different glaze colours were experimented with at the imperial kilns during this period, and even closely related, yet clearly distinguishable shades could be created with daunting precision. No less than three types of pale greenish glazes, for example, appear to have been developed and employed side by side in the Yongle reign, all of which look rather different in real life, but less so in illustrations. In the West all three are thus generally referred to as ‘wintergreen’. In China, however, they are clearly differentiated by different terms.

The sparkling bluish-green glaze of the present jar – arguably the most desirable and the most prestigious green hue – is in China called cuiqingCui means ‘kingfisher’ and is used to denote any kind of blue green reminiscent of the bird’s plumage, for example, that of a kind of green bamboo, or that of jadeite. What in China is generally called ‘wintergreen’ (dongqing), but also ‘Eastern green’ (dongqing written with a different dong character), is a more typical celadon colour, more yellowish and less glassy, probably intended to imitate Longquan celadon, which is known from Yongle stem bowls. Finally, a paler, more watery, bluish-tinged glaze is seen on some deep conical bowls with incised lotus scrolls, which have been attributed to various fifteenth-century periods and in China are now generally dated to the Yongle reign. That glaze is called qingbai (‘bluish- or greenish-white’), thus again relating it to a ware of the past.

Jadeite green’, or cuiqing, porcelains are among the rarest monochrome pieces successfully created at that time. Only five other pieces glazed in this colour appear to be recorded: The pair to this jar, of the same shape, but lacking its cover, is in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing. Two closely related jars with this kind of glaze are preserved from the Qing court collection, both of very similar form, with a similar cover, but with three small lugs attached around the shoulder: one now in the Palace Museum, Beijing (fig. 1), is illustrated in Mingdai Hongwu Yongle yuyao ciqi/Imperial Porcelains from the Reigns of Hongwu and Yongle in the Ming Dynasty, Beijing, 2015, pl. 122; and again in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Monochrome Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1999, pl. 123; the other, now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (fig. 2) was included in the Museum’s exhibition Shi yu xin: Mingdai Yongle huangdi de ciqi/Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous: Porcelains from the Yongle Reign (1403-1424) of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 2017, catalogue, pp. 82-3. Two other jars of this latter shape have survived without a cover: one, retaining the three lugs, is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig. 3) illustrated in Wu Tung, Earth Transformed: Chinese Ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 1998, pp. 112-3 and on the dust jacket; the other, with the lugs ground down, has been sold at Christie’s New York, 16th/17th September 2010, lot 1357.

A Jadeite-Green Glazed Covered Jar With Lug Handles, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period, Qing Court Collection © Palace Museum, Beijing

fig. 1. A Jadeite-Green Glazed Covered Jar With Lug Handles, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period, Qing Court Collection© Palace Museum, Beijing.

A Jadeite-Green Glazed Covered Jar With Lug Handles, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period

fig. 2. A Jadeite-Green Glazed Covered Jar With Lug Handles, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

A Jadeite-Green Glazed Jar With Lug Handles, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period, John Gardner Coolidge Collection © Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston (NO

fig. 3. A Jadeite-Green Glazed Jar With Lug Handles, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period, John Gardner Coolidge Collection© Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston (NO. 53.1003).

After the Yongle period this subtle colouration, which requires impeccably prepared materials and utmost control of the firing, was abandoned and never properly revived, even though a large range of exquisite bluish-green glaze tones were created again three centuries later, in the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735), quite possibly modelled on pieces such as this jar, which undoubtedly would have caught the Yongzheng Emperor’s eye.

The celadon glaze (dongqing) is known from five contemporary Yongle stem bowls: two in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Mingdai Hongwu Yongle yuyao ciqiop.cit., pl. 141 and The Complete Collection of Treasuresop.cit., pl. 124; and in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuguan cang gu taoci ciliao xuancui [Selection of ancient ceramic material from the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2005, vol. 1, pl. 88; one in the Tibet Museum, illustrated in Xizang Bowuguan cang Ming Qing ciqi jingpin/Ming and Qing Dynasties Ceramics Preserved in Tibet Museum, Beijing, 2004, pl. 26; and two sold in our rooms, one with anhua dragons around the interior and a four-character Yongle mark incised in the centre, sold in Hong Kong, 24th November 1981, lot 133, and again in these rooms, 22nd March 2001, lot 90; the other unmarked, sold in our London rooms, 7th April 1981, lot 252, and in our Hong Kong rooms, 11th May 1983, lot 105. For a pale bluish-green (qingbai) glazed piece in the Palace Museum, Beijing, see the bowl from the Qing court collection illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasuresop.cit., pl. 125, there also attributed to the Yongle period.

The endearing shape of this jar is also extremely rare, but is similarly seen on monochrome 'sweet-white' jars with incised decoration, now all lacking their covers; one such piece, preserved in the Shanghai Museum, is published in 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, pl. 4-12 (fig. 4); another was sold in these rooms, 4th June 1985, lot 1, from the J.M. Hu Family Collection; and a third jar of this form in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, was included in the exhibition Mingdai chunian ciqi tezhan mulu/Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of Early Ming Period Porcelain, Taipei, 1982, cat. no. 55, illustrated with a non-matching cover. Like the ‘jadeite green’ jars, these white jars with incised design were also made in two similar versions, with and without lugs; for the latter see an example illustrated in Bo Gyllensvärd, Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1964, pl. 664.

A tianbai-Glazed Jar, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period © Shanghai Museum

fig. 4. tianbai-Glazed Jar, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period© Shanghai Museum.

The shape may be following earlier jars for chess pieces, although the proportions and form of the cover were much adjusted in the Yongle period; for a Song (960-1279) example from the Yaozhou kilns compare the jar from the Le Cong Tang collection, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 3rd October 2017, lot 2, illustrated together with a companion piece from the kiln site, fig. 1; for a Yuan (1279-1368) blue-and-white example see the exhibition catalogue Jingdezhen chutu Yuan Ming guanyao ciqi [Yuan and Ming imperial porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen], Yan-Huang Art Museum, Beijing, 1999, cat. no. 1.

 

A Fine and Extremely Rare Imperial Blue and Brown Glazed 'Dragon' Bowl, Ming Dynasty, Hongwu Period (1368-1398)

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Lot 46. A Fine and Extremely Rare Imperial Blue and Brown Glazed 'Dragon' Bowl, Ming Dynasty, Hongwu Period (1368-1398); 20.5 cm. Estimate: HK$8,000,000 - 12,000,000 / US$1,040,000-1,550,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

the interior glazed in brilliant cobalt blue and deftly decorated in anhua technique with two scaly five-clawed dragons striding amidst ruyi-shaped clouds, encircling a central ruyi-cloud medallion, the exterior subtly decorated with a band of petal lappets around the foot and covered in brown glaze.

The Emergence of an Imperial Style under the Hongwu Emperor
Regina Krahl

This bowl, impressed with five-clawed dragons and glazed in cobalt blue and iron brown, appears to be unique, but it belongs to a miniscule group of bi-chrome glazed porcelains with anhua designs, among the earliest with coloured glazes. Pieces of the group are variously attributed to the late Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) or the Hongwu reign (1368-1398) of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), but a fragment of a blue-and-brown glazed vessel with anhua dragon design of this type was recovered from the site of the Ming imperial palace at Nanjing.1 It was discovered together with Hongwu blue-and-white and underglaze-red decorated porcelain fragments by the Jade Belt River (Yudaihe) that surrounded the inner palace buildings and, given this location, can be considered to represent Hongwu imperial porcelain made for use by the imperial family.

We do not know much about the Hongwu Emperor’s possible interest in the arts and crafts. Born into a very poor family and orphaned while still young, his ascent to defeat the ruling Mongols, to govern China for a solid three decades, to become the founder of one of China’s longest-lasting dynasties and, despite a total lack of prior education, to leave many writings, including a commentary on Laozi, is near-miraculous. It cannot have left him much time for aesthetic pursuits. Yet in the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, which were founded in the Yuan dynasty, we see from the Hongwu period onwards the unquestionable emergence of an imperial style – a style that exerted a defining and lasting influence on the porcelains designed for the court right up to the end of China’s imperial era in the twentieth century. Of this, the present bowl is an archetypal example.

Many aspects of this bowls can be traced to origins in the Yuan dynasty, but in the early Ming the various features were consolidated, polished and refined and thus developed into a classic design – almost certainly evidence of strict imperial supervision of the porcelain production. Five-clawed dragons are a motif that appeared in works of art already in the Yuan dynasty, but only in the Ming was it appropriated as the foremost symbol of the person and the authority of the Emperor.

The anhua (‘hidden decoration’) technique, achieved by impressing the piece against a mould, perhaps with a thin layer of white slip in between, to create a shallow relief, was also developed in the Yuan dynasty, when it was used particularly on monochrome white pieces, but also in combination with underglaze-blue decoration as, for example, on a bowl in the Tianminlou collection, painted with a blue dragon outside and with a blue double Vajra in the centre, surrounded by white anhua dragons.2 In white on white, however, the ‘hidden’ design is often indeed difficult to make out. Under the cobalt-blue glaze of our bowl, the elegant physique and energetic stride of the dragons is strikingly evident. In the Hongwu period, the whole design became clearly defined: on bowls and stem cups it appears always with a large billowing cloud the centre, whose undulating vapours form auspicious lingzhi (longevity fungus) formations; on dishes it is combined with three smaller cloud motifs.

Both blue and brown glazes were already in use in the Yuan dynasty, but are extremely rare. Brown was hardly used at all, either for underglaze painting, or as a glaze, but a small brown-glazed inkstone box and cover from the Yuan is preserved in the Capital Museum, Beijing.3 Blue also remained very scarce, but appears on a couple of Yuan porcelains with gold decoration and on a dozen or so pieces with motifs reserved in white.4

Like with underglaze-painted porcelains, cobalt blue appears in the Hongwu period to have been used more rarely than copper red. A blue glaze can be seen on one monochrome dish with anhua dragons from the Sedgwick collection in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, which was included in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition The Arts of the Ming Dynasty, London, 1957, cat. no. 112, and is illustrated in the accompanying Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 30, 1955-57, pl. 33. Red bowls and dishes are much more numerous, and a fragmentary bowl was found at the Hongwu stratum of the Jingdezhen kiln sites, see Chang Foundation (fig. 1).5 Others are, for example, in the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Severance and Greta Millikin collection, in the British Museum, London, from the Eumorfopoulos collection; and two from the V.W. Shriro collection were sold in our London rooms, 28th May 1963, lots 123 and 124;6 red dishes are in the British Museum, from the Sedgwick collection; in the Shanghai Museum; and in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo.7

A tianbai-Glazed Jar, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period © Shanghai Museum

Fig. 1, A fragmentary red-glazed anhua 'dragon' bowl, Ming dynasty, Hongwu period, excavated from the MIng imperial kiln site at Jingdezhen. Courtesy of Jingdezhen Ceramics Archaeology Institute.

To apply two differently coloured glazes on the inside and the outside of a vessel would seem a highly complex manner of treating a vessel. It was hardly ever attempted either before or after, and only a few exceptions come to mind, such as white-and-black Ding ware bowls of the Song dynasty (960-1279), or Jiajing (1522-1566) porcelains with bicoloured glazes. Only four other pieces of the present design and glazed in this colour scheme appear to be preserved, three stem cups and one dish, and only two other bi-chrome glazed bowls of this type are recorded, but in different colour combinations:

One blue-and-brown stem cup is in the British Museum from the Sedgwick collection (fig. 2); another is in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; and a third from the Norton collection was sold in our London rooms, 5th November 1963, lot 172.8 The three vary in size and were obviously individually fashioned rather than produced in a larger series. One blue-and-brown dish from the Eumorfopoulos collection is also in the British Museum (fig. 2).9

A blue and brown glazed anhua 'dragon' dish and a stem cup, Ming dynasty, Hongwu period, © The Trustees of the British Museum (Nos 1936

Fig. 2. A blue and brown glazed anhua 'dragon' dish and a stem cup, Ming dynasty, Hongwu period, © The Trustees of the British Museum (Nos 1936.1012.240 and 1968,0423.1).

A red-and-blue bowl with a cobalt-blue glaze inside and a copper-red one outside, from the collection of Lady David and later in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, was sold in our London rooms 6th July 1976, lot 131 (fig. 3);10 and a brown-and-white bowl, glazed brown inside and probably with a neutral glaze over the white porcelain body on the outside, is in the Yamato Bunkakan, Nara.11

A red and blue glazed anhua 'dragon' bowL, Ming dynasty, Hongwu period, Idemitsu Museum Of Arts, Tokyo, sold at Sotheby's London, 6th july 1976, lot 131

 

Fig. 3. A red and blue glazed anhua 'dragon' bowL, Ming dynasty, Hongwu period, Idemitsu Museum Of Arts, Tokyo, sold at Sotheby's London, 6th july 1976, lot 131.

Our blue-and-brown bowl with a matching stem cup and the matching dish (fig. 2) might suggest a set made for ritual use. Jessica Harrison-Hall suggests about the colouration “Conceivably it represents the blue of heaven and the red-brown of earth”.12 In this connection, it is tempting to mention, as Christine Lau has stated, that “in the tenth year of his reign (in 1377), the Hongwu Emperor decided to hold the sacrifices offered to Heaven and Earth together in one place under one roof”.13 Of course traditionally, blue was the colour of heaven and yellow the colour of earth, but bright yellow porcelain was not yet available at this period, and therefore had to be replaced with items approximating that colour, such as yellow jades, and it seems conceivable that the brown glaze might have been considered to serve the purpose. There is no indication, however, that two-coloured wares were ever used for such combined rituals, nor that wares of this type were made for ritual purposes at all, although the existence of stem cups might suggest this.

1 See Zhu Ming yicui. Nanjing Ming gugong chutu taoci/A Legacy of the Ming. Ceramic Finds from the Site of the Ming Palace in Nanjing, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1996, no. 26.
2 Lin Yeqiang (Peter Y.K. Lam), ‘Yuan qinghua longwen kao: Yi Zhizheng ping wei zhongxin/Dragons on Yuan Blue-and-White as Seen from the Bands on the David Vases’, Li Zhongmou et al., Youlan shencai. 2012 Shanghai Yuan qinghua guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji/Splendors in Smalt. Art of Yuan Blue-and-white Porcelain Proceedings, Shanghai, 2015, vol. 2, pp. 194-205, fig. 23.
3 Zhongguo taoci quanji [Complete series on Chinese ceramics], Shanghai, 1999-2000, vol. 11, pl. 249.
4 Zhongguo taoci quanjiop.cit., pls 241-244.
5 Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1996, cat. no. 15.
6 Sherman E. Lee and Wai-kam Ho, Chinese Art under the Mongols. The Yüan Dynasty (1279-1368), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1968, cat. no. 165; Jessica Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, no. 2:3.
7 Harrison-Hall, op.cit., no. 2:4; 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, pl. 3-8; Idemitsu Bijutsukan: Kaikan jūgo shūnen kinen ten zuroku/The Fifteenth Anniversary Catalogue, Tokyo, 1981, col. pl. 766.
8 Harrison-Hall, op.cit., no. 1:20; Chinese Art under the Mongolsop.cit., cat. no. 160.
9 Harrison-Hall, op.cit., no. 1: 21.
10 It is also illustrated in Chinese Art under the Mongolsop.cit., cat. no. 162; and in Idemitsu Bijutsukanop.cit., col. pl. 765.
11 Yamato Bunkakan shozōhin zuhan mokuroku 7. Chūgoku tōji/Chinese Ceramics from the Museum Yamato Bunkakan CollectionIllustrated Catalogue Series No. 7, Nara, 1977, no. 114.
12 Harrison-Hall, op.cit., p. 69.
13 Christine Lau, ‘Ceremonial Monochrome Wares of the Ming Dynasty’, in Rosemary E. Scott, ed., The Porcelains of Jingdezhen, Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia, no. 16, London, 1993, p. 94.

SONG DYNASTY BLACK TEA BOWLS FROM THE AOYAMA STUDIO COLLECTION

An Exceptional and Rare Heirloom 'Jian' Silver-Streaked 'Nogime Temmoku' Teabowl Southern Song Dynasty

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Property from the Aoyama Studio Collection. Lot 31. An Exceptional and Rare Heirloom 'Jian' Silver-Streaked 'Nogime Temmoku' Teabowl, Southern Song Dynasty  (1127-1279); 12 cm. Estimate: HK$12,000,000 - 16,000,000 / US$1,550,000-2,070,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

superbly potted, the deep rounded sides rising from a short straight foot to a rim indented with a thin concave groove, unctuously covered with a lustrous black glaze with iridescent silvery-blue ‘hare’s fur’ streaks, the glaze draining from the rim and falling short of the foot in a glossy black bulge revealing the dark brown body, the rim bound with metal, Japanese wood box.

ProvenanceCollection of Peter Hariolf Plesch (1918-2013), until 1959.
Sotheby's London, 17th March, 1959, lot 7.
Bluett & Sons Ltd, London, 1959.
Collection of Roger Pilkington (1928-1969), from 1959, and thence by descent.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 6th April 2016, lot 12.
Nogime Temmoku with a Touch of Silver
Regina Krahl

The love and connoisseurship of black-glazed tea bowls from Fujian is intimately connected with the homage paid to these ceramics by Japanese collectors and tea masters. In Japan, ‘Jian’ ware tea bowls were revered virtually from the moment they left the kilns in the Song dynasty (960-1279), and the Japanese term temmoku (or tenmoku) is now universally accepted for this group of black-glazed bowls, as lasting testimony of this reverence.

Black tea bowls were particularly appreciated in Buddhist monasteries, where tea was drunk for its beneficial effects on body and mind as well as ritually offered to the Buddha. The seemingly humble aspect of black tea bowls made them particularly appropriate in this context. The groove below the rim made them comfortable to hold, their heavy potting had an insulating effect, keeping the tea inside hot while protecting the fingers outside from the heat, and their dark interiors made for a striking contrast with the white froth of whipped tea.

In Japan, where whipped tea continues to be ritually prepared and consumed in the Tea Ceremony, black ‘Jian’ tea bowls became associated with monasteries in the Tianmu (Japanese: temmoku) mountain range in Lin’an county, north Zhejiang province, now a nature reserve renowned for its giant ancient Japanese cedar trees, visited also by the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-95) and still famous for its Tianmu tea. Temmoku tea bowls were probably brought to Japan together with Fujian tea by Buddhist monks visiting Chinese monasteries in the Song dynasty. They are still worshipped in Japan today, several of them having gained the rank of National Treasures. 

The Jianyang kilns of Fujian, which produced nothing but tea bowls, annually supplied them as tribute to the court and the Huizong Emperor (r. 1101-1125), one of China’s greatest imperial art lovers, patrons and tea connoisseurs, is known to have been fond of them.

‘Jian’ ware became known in the West through the efforts of James Marshall Plumer (1899-1960), an American who in the 1930s worked at the Fuzhou Office of the Chinese Maritime Customs and fell in love with the black tea bowls offered in the city’s antique shops. Determined to locate the kilns, he set out in 1935 on a perilous journey to this remote and at that time dangerous rural area in inner Fujian, first travelling in his own car, which he had to abandon at the fourth river crossing, then by ferry boat, carrying on by rail, rickshaw, bus, bamboo raft, mail boat and on foot, bribing highwaymen to secure safe passage, but often stopped by floods that had carried away parts of the road or a bridge. He was the first to locate the kilns in the region of Shuiji and through his teaching and a posthumously published survey made the ware widely known, well beyond the circles of tea lovers in China and Japan (James Marshall Plumer, Temmoku: A Study of the Ware of Chien, Tokyo, 1972). 

The striking black glazes can show various different effects, when air bubbles in the glaze burst, leaving a pattern of streaks, compared to hare’s fur (Japanese nogime), or spots compared to oil spots (Japanese yuteki), that can range in tone from rust brown to metallic blue. While pieces with rust-brown ‘hare’s fur’ streaks are the best known and most characteristic ‘Jian’ ware tea bowls, those with bluish ‘oil spots’ are the rarest and most celebrated. In between, there exists an endless variety of different glaze effects, for which no specific names have been coined, which determine the relative desirability of ‘Jian’ tea bowls. With its sparkling glaze interspersed with metallic silvery to coppery steaks, the present bowl is among the rarest and most highly coveted nogime examples. 

A wide range of different temmoku bowls is published in Tōbutsu temmoku [Import commodity ‘temmoku’], Chadō Shiryōkan, Kyoto, 1994, including some of the finest examples preserved in Japan as well as bowls excavated in Fujian province. Among the former, most closely reminiscent of the present bowl, also with metallic shimmering, copper-coloured streaks, are bowls from the Kyoto National Museum and the Tokugawa Art Museum, pp.19ff, pls 10, 13, 15, 16. This effect of the iron-brown specks taking on this metallic sheen is so rare that it is hardly encountered among the many wasters found at the kiln site, and only a few comparable fragments are illustrated ibid., pp. 64ff., pls 47 bottom right, 48 and 61, and p. 103, reference pl. E. 

The characteristic feature of ‘Jian’ tea bowls of the glaze inside having pooled off-centre, which has been remarked by many scholars, has been discussed in an article by Marshall P.S. Wu, who suggests that a deliberately oblique setting of the bowls in the saggar helped to avoid the formation of stalactiform glaze drops that might stick to the saggar (Marshall P.S. Wu, ‘Black-glazed Jian Ware and Tea Drinking in the Song Dynasty’, Orientations, vol. 29, no. 4, April 1998, pp. 22ff, figs 2-5)

A Superb and Rare Cizhou Russet-Splashed Black-Glazed 'Partridge Feather' Bowl Northern Song Dynasty

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Lot 2. A Superb and Rare Cizhou Russet-Splashed Black-Glazed 'Partridge Feather' Bowl, Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127); 13 cm. Estimate: HK$800,000 - 1,200,000 / US$104,000-155,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

potted with a deep and subtly rounded body rising from a short foot to a flared rim, the interior covered with a glossy black glaze liberally and densely splashed with short russet 'partridge feather' mottles, the exterior covered in a persimmon glaze stopping neatly above the footring to reveal the pale buff stoneware body.

Provenance: Collection of Mr and Mrs Yeung Wing Tak, Hong Kong.
Eskenazi Ltd, London.
David Newton, Johannesburg.
Bonhams Hong Kong, 28th November 2011, lot 494.
Eskenazi Ltd, London, no. C4582.
 
Exhibited: Yang Yongde kangli zhencang heiyou ci/ Black Porcelain from the Mr & Mrs Yeung Wing Tak Collection, Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, Guangzhou, 1997, cat. no. 106.
Ancient Chinese Black Wares from the Collection of Mr and Mrs Yeung Wing Tak, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1999.
Song: Chinese Ceramics, 10th to 13th Century (Part 5), Eskenazi Ltd, London, 2018, cat. no. 13.

Note: This bowl is remarkable for its captivating pattern of irregular russet splashes on the interior, which creates a striking contrast to the lustrous dark brown glaze. Known as zhegu ban, or ‘partridge feathers’, this pattern evolved from the experimental nature of Song dynasty kilns as they competed in producing wares for the thriving tea market. Bowls covered in a lustrous dark-brown glaze heightened the aesthetic experience of drinking tea, which at the time was energetically whisked to produce a rich white froth. The present bowl is a particularly fine example of its type, as it features small and evenly applied flecks, suggesting it was made in the Northern Song period. Stonewares coated in rich dark glazes began to be produced in large numbers in the Tang period (618-907), with the finest examples made at kilns near the Yellow River. The monochromatic glazes soon led the way to painted or splashed designs, which were achieved by either splashing or applying with a brush an iron-oxide slip over the glaze. In the kiln, the gravity would pull the slip downwards creating irregular splashes or streaks. Not only were these wares particularly suitable for drinking whisked tea, the serendipitous nature of their glaze must have captivated the imagination of Song literati.

The mesmerising ‘partridge-feather’ glaze was produced at many kilns in both northern and southern China, attesting to its popularity. Most examples were made at kilns that produced Cizhou wares, such as the Guantai kilns in Hebei province, the Qinlongsi and Dangyangyu kilns in Henan province. Bowls of similar form, recovered at Guantai, Ci county, are illustrated in The Cizhou Kiln Site at Guantai, Beijing, 1997, col. pl. 29, figs 1 and 3, pl. 65, fig. 1; and a larger bowl from Dangyangyu, the glaze similarly covering also the interior of the foot, is published in Series of China’s Ancient Porcelain Kiln Sites. Dangyangyu Kiln of China, Beijing, 2011, pl. 56.

Two bowls of similar proportions, from the Sheinman collection, now in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, were included in the exhibition Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell and Partridge Feathers. Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazes Ceramics, 400-1400, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, cat. no. 38a and b; a bowl formerly in the collection of Lord Cunliffe, was included in Principal Wares of the Song Period from a Private Collection, Eskenazi, London, 2015, cat. no. 23; and a further similar bowl from the collection of Frederick M. Mayer, was sold at Christie's London, 24th June 1974, lot 55.

ARCHAIC JADES FROM THE HEI-CHI COLLECTION

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Lot 16. An Extremely Rare and Important Jade 'Twin Bird' Stem Cup, Western Han Dynasty (206 BC – AD 9); 11.3 cm. Estimate: HK$6,000,000 - 8,000,000 / US$775,000-1,040,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

the cylindrical vessel tapering to a short waisted stem and splayed circular foot, the exterior skilfully worked with a pair of phoenix-like birds striding forward, each mythical bird portrayed crested and with a long tail, the body accentuated with scrollwork echoing the interlinked 'C'-scrolls on the ground of the frieze and the bands of T-shaped motifs, all above a border of stylised petal motifs above the foot.

Provenance: Acquired in Hong Kong, 20th June 1993.

Exhibited: Ancient Chinese Jade, J.J. Lally & Co., New York, 2018, cat. no. 130.

Vermillion Birds for Immortality
Regina Krahl

Around the time of the Western Han (206 BC – AD 9), jade stem cups of this type were items of the highest prestige produced for the Chinese imperial house, local royalty and a privileged elite connected to these courts. Related beakers have been discovered at some of the period’s most important residential and burial sites, and were in tombs placed in prominent position. They were not ordinary wine cups, but are believed to have been used in connection with immortality rites, possibly as receptacles to contain gathered dew which, mixed with powdered jade, is said to have been consumed as immortality elixir. The bird decoration on the present cup appears to be unique, but would seem to support such usage.

A cup from the tomb of Zhao Mo, King of Nan Yue (r. 137-122 BC), at Xianggangshan, Guangdong province, formed part of an elaborate construct that not only secured it against toppling but also emphasized its significance: It was placed on a pedestal in the centre of a large bronze tripod basin, with a trefoil jade disc around it, like a collar, and with three silver dragons with golden heads rising from the basin to hold the disc; see James C.S. Lin, ed., The Search for Immortality. Tomb Treasures of Han China, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2012, cat. no. 164, pp. 58 and 287-9.

The present cup is remarkable for its superbly designed and executed, majestic bird motif. The phoenix-like bird with its down-curved beak, up-curved crest, fanciful tail, standing on one leg, clearly represents the Vermillion Bird (zhuque) of the South, which is associated with the element fire and with the force of yang. The cosmological concept of yin and yang and the five elements, associated with the directions (plus the centre), was one of the foundations of Daoist immortality rites. The Red Bird therefore occupies a prominent position in Han iconography and is ubiquitous in Han art, depicted in many different media, in jade, for example, carved in openwork on a pendent, also from the royal tomb of Zhao Mo, see Su Bai, ed., Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo zhongda kaogu faxian/Great Archaeological Discoveries of the People’s Republic of China. 1949-1999, Beijing, 1999, p. 274 (fig. 1); in gilt-bronze in form of finials, e.g. on the famous jade wine container in the Harvard Art Museums (Lin, op.cit., p. 169, fig. 54); and in many Han stone reliefs, e.g. one from Suining county, Jiangsu (Käte Finsterbusch, Verzeichnis und Motivindex der Han-Darstellungen [Register and index of motives in Han illustrations], Wiesbaden, 1966-2004, vol. 1, no. 553)(fig. 2).

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fig. 1. An openwork pendant with the Red Bird, Western Han dynasty, excavated from the mausoleum of King of Nanyue, Guangzhou, Guangdong, Museum of The Western Han Mausoleum of King of Nanyue.

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fig. 2. A rubbing of a Han stone relief from Suining County, Jiangsu. After: Käte Finsterbusch, Verzeichnis und Motivindex der Han-Darstellungen [Register and Index of Motives in Han Illustrations], Wiesbaden, 1966-2004, Vol. 1, No. 553.

The design here used as a backdrop, which looks like a fairly regular geometric pattern, is in fact a most sophisticated design of whorls turned in different directions, joined up in pairs both horizontally and vertically but in an irregular manner, thus imbuing the formal ornament with life. On the present piece, the pattern helps to focus attention on the birds as it serves to texture the ground. Companion pieces are mostly decorated with whorl patterns only, and sometimes have a baluster-shaped stem.

Somewhat earlier in date is a beaker recovered from the site of the Epang palace outside Xi’an, Shaanxi province, which had been commissioned by Emperor Qin Shihuang (r. 221-210 BC) (p. 45, fig. 142); see The First Emperor. China’s Terracotta Army, The British Museum, London, 2007, cat. no. 92; another cup, closely related in shape and with the whorl pattern enclosed between related scroll borders, was excavated from a tomb at Luobowan, Guixian, Guangxi province, apparently belonging to a high official of the Nan Yue Kingdom and dating from the long reign of the first Nan Yue King, Zhao Tuo (r. 203-137), see Guangxi Guixian Luobowan Han mu/Luobowan Han Dynasty Tombs in Guixian County, Beijing, 1988, col. pl. 8 and pl. 28, fig. 3 (fig. 3); and a forth cup from a royal tomb of the Zhu kingdom at Shizishan, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, is published in Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo zhongda kaogu faxian, op.cit., p. 260; compare also a beaker of this type from the Sze Yuen Tang collection, sold at Bonhams Hong Kong, 5th April 2016, lot 38 for a world record price, together with a related cup missing its stem, lot 42.

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fig. 3. A jade stem cup, Western Han Dynasty, excavated from a tomb at Luobowan, Guixian, Guangxi Province, Museum of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. After: Zhongguo Meishu Quanji: Gongyi Meishu Bian [Complete Series On Chinese Art: Arts And Crafts Section], Vol. 9: Yuqi [Jades], Beijing, 1991, Pl. 177.

 This beaker shape, made elegant through its waisted stem, came into use already prior to the Han dynasty and survived it, but not for long. Prototypes may have been pieces of lacquer, at the time also a highly prestigious material, see The First Emperor, op.cit., p. 102, but the royal tomb of Zhao Mo also contained a similar bronze stem cup and cover inlaid with jade plaques (Lin, op.cit., p. 66, fig. 39).

Although no other bird-decorated cup appears to have survived from the Han period, such designs seem to have inspired the later production of archaistic vessels, such as a cylindrical tripod cup with handle from the collection of Quincy Chuang, attributed to the late Ming (1368-1644), where the bird is depicted with a complex, emphatically angled curlicue of tail feathers against a diaper design made up of squared scroll motifs; see the Asia Society exhibition Chinese Jades from Han to Ch’ing, Asia House Gallery, New York, 1980, cat. no. 140.

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Lot 21. A Rare and Large Calcified Yellow Jade Zhulong ('Pig Dragon') Neolithic Period, Hongshan Culture (c. 3800-2700 BC); 10 cm. Estimate: HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000 HKD / US$258,000-387,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

of generous proportions, the iconic coiled body further accentuated with a superbly rendered wrinkled snout, the signature slit below the sealed lips terminated before meeting the central perforation, the neck drilled for suspension.

Literature: Jiang Tao and Liu Yunhui, Jades from the Hei-Chi Collection, Beijing, 2006, p. 27.

Note: Notable for its large size, this carving depicts a zhulong, or pig-dragon, a modern term that describes the animal’s upturned snout, prominent bulging eyes and coiled body. Considered to represent the prototype of depictions of mythological dragons in later Chinese art, zhulong are some of the most interesting creations of the enigmatic Hongshan culture (c. 3500 BC), and evidence the existence of a complex system of belief in supernatural forces.

Jade zhulong have been recovered at various tomb sites in Northern China, often placed on the chest of the tomb occupants, suggesting they were worn as chest ornaments. These carvings have been studied by Elizabeth Childs-Johnson in ‘Jades of the Hongshan Culture’, Arts Asiatiques, vol. XLVI, December 1991, pp. 82-95, where she identifies the territory of the Liaoxi and Liaodong peninsulas, and the upper and lower valleys of the Liao river as the areas where these Hongshan remains originated from. While the function of these carvings have not been determined, fragments of a zhulong have been recovered at a fertility temple complex in Niuheliang, Kezuo, Liaoning province, suggesting a connection with fertility rituals.

A jade zhulong of similar proportions is illustrated in Roger Keverne, Jade, London, 1995, p. 62, fig. 22; a slightly larger one in the Liaoning Provincial Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics is illustrated in Hongshan wenhua yuqi jianshang [Connoisseurship of jades from the Hongshan culture], Beijing, 2014, p. 94, no. 1; and another in the Tianjin Museum, is published in Tianjin shi yishu bowuguan cang. Yu [Jades in the Tianjin Museum], Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 7. See also a slightly smaller yellow jade zhulong recently sold in these rooms, 11th July 2020, lot 102 [https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2020/monochrome-hk0939/lot.102.html].

QING IMPERIAL PORCELAINS

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Lot 10. An Extremely Rare Celadon-Glazed Ewer, Seal Mark and Period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 25 cm. Estimate: HK$2,000,000 - 3,000,000 / US$258,000 - 387,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

after a metalwork form, exquisitely potted with a straight body encircled by an incised formal foliate scroll with fine feathery leaves between raised scalloped borders, the shoulder with a raised incised floral scroll surmounted by a tall neck with a rounded bulb in the centre rising to a flared rim opening into a spout, the bulb with small floral sprigs with upright leaves above and pendent petal panels and pearl strings below, covered overall with an elegant pale celadon glaze.

Provenance: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 31st October 1995, lot 408. 

Note: The unusual form of this attractive and rare ewer appears to be derived from a Middle Eastern metal shape, but such foreign vessels were rarely taken directly as models in the Qing dynasty. It was generally the potters of the Yongle period in the early Ming dynasty who copied such forms, and the present ewer form, which exists both with and without handle, and comes also with blue-and-white decoration in early Ming style, may be an adaptation of an early Ming porcelain form, which in turn is based on Middle Eastern metal prototypes. Compare a fragmentary white porcelain ewer recovered from the Yongle stratum of the Ming imperial kiln sites, 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. no. 6. However, a 12th/13th century Iranian metal ewer from the Keir collection, which is more closely related to this Qing dynasty form than to the early Ming version, is illustrated in Geza Fehervari, Islamic Metalwork of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection, London, 1976, pl. 15.

A very similar ewer of this rare celadon-glazed type from the Avery Brundage collection is in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated in He Li, Chinese Ceramics. A New Standard Guide, London, 1996, pl. 544; see also one sold at Christie’s London, 28th/29th June 1965, lot 98, from the Richard C. Fuller collection; and another sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 28th November 2005, lot 1312, from the Ruth P. Phillips collection.

Vessels of this form are also known with other monochrome glazes, such as a white ewer from the Grandidier collection in the Musée Guimet, Paris, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World's Great Collections, Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, 1980-82, vol. 7, fig. 170. Compare another white ewer from the collection of Edward T. Chow, illustrated by Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010. Vol. 2, no. 794, and sold in these rooms, 8th April 2013, lot 3050. 

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Lot 22. A Fine and Rare Guan-Type Quadruple Vase, Seal Mark and Period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 10.2 cm. Estimate: HK$1,500,000 - 2,000,000 / US$194,000-258,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

masterfully potted as four conjoined vases of slender cylindrical form with a short neck and everted rim, covered overall in an unctuous pale bluish-grey glaze suffused with a matrix of yellowish-brown crackles, the footring applied with dark brown dressing, each base with one character of the four-character seal mark in underglaze blue.

Provenance: Collection of James and Marilynn Alsdorf, Chicago.
Christie's Hong Kong, 23rd March 1993, lot 735.
Collection of Robert Chang.
Christie's Hong Kong, 2nd November 1999, lot 524.
ExhibitedChinese Art from the Collection of James W. and Marilyn Alsdorf, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, 1970, cat. no. c59l.
An Exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, Christie's London, 1993, cat. no. 59. 

Note: Inspired by Song dynasty prototypes, conjoined vases of this charming and unusual form were an innovation of the Yongzheng reign, and required craftsmen’s utmost attention in potting and firing. A slightly smaller vase of this type in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Qingdai yuyao ciqi [Qing imperial porcelains], vol. 1, Beijing, 2005, pl. 149; two were sold in these rooms, the first, 24th May 1985, lot 503, the second, 22nd May 1984, lot 185, and again, 8th April 2011, lot 3002; and one from the collection of Stephen Junkunc III, sold in our New York rooms, 20th March 2019, lot 518.

Vases of this form with Yongzheng marks and of the period, are also known covered in other monochrome glazes: see an example with a Ru-type glaze, in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the museum’s exhibition Qing Monochrome Porcelain, Taipei, 1981, cat. no. 77; a celadon-glazed example from the J.M. Hu Collection, sold in our New York rooms, 4th June 1985, lot 40; and a slightly smaller version covered in a teadust glaze, also sold in our New York rooms, 21st March 2018, lot 536.

IMPORTANT CHINESE ART. AN EXTREMELY FINE AND RARE FAMILLE-ROSE 'PEACH' BOWL

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Property from the Alan Chuang Collection. Lot 3622. An Extremely Fine and Rare Famille-Rose'Peach' Bowl, Mark and Period of Yongzheng (1723-1735); 14.3 cm. Estimate: HK$25,000,000 - 35,000,000 / US$3,200,000 - 4,500,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

superbly enamelled in vivid tones of rose-pink, shades of green, yellow, iron-red, brown and black with two varieties of flowering and fruiting peach branches issuing from the foot and extending across the exterior and over the rim onto the interior, one branch with a brownish-black bark and bearing white double blossoms, the other with a brown bark and bearing five-petalled rose-pink blossoms, both with large ripe fruit delicately coloured in shaded tones of yellowish-green to subtle raspberry-pink, depicted in iron red with two bats on the exterior and three on the interior forming the wufu, the base inscribed in underglaze blue with a six-character reign mark within a double circle.

Provenance: Collection of Edward T. Chow (1910-80).
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 25th November 1980, lot 169.
 
Literature: Cécile and Michel Beurdeley, La Céramique Chinoise, Fribourg, 1974, col. pls 86-87.
Julian Thompson, The Alan Chuang Collection of Chinese Porcelain, Hong Kong, 2009, pl. 96.

Note: Yongzheng porcelain bowls with famille-rose peach-and-bat design are extremely rare. The present bowl, with five peaches all rendered on the exterior, appears to be unique, as other examples are designed with six peaches, four on the exterior and two on the interior. Another unusual feature of the present piece is that the fruits do not have the heavy pink outlines seen on other examples, which demonstrates the superb skills of the porcelain painters and the marvellous possibilities of the new famille-rose palette.

Five is a propitious number, and the five red bats painted on the bowl are among the most popular themes in Chinese decorative arts. Red bats provide a rebus or visual pun for vast good fortune, and five bats provide a rebus for wufu, the Five Blessings of longevity, health, wealth, love of virtue and a good end to life. Bats painted upside down provide a further rebus, since the word for ‘upside down’, dao, is pronounced similarly to the word for ‘arriving’, and thus an upside-down bat signifies 'happiness is arriving'.

Five is a propitious number, and the five red bats painted on the bowl are among the most popular themes in Chinese decorative arts. Red bats provide a rebus or visual pun for vast good fortune, and five bats provide a rebus for wufu, the Five Blessings of longevity, health, wealth, love of virtue and a good end to life. Bats painted upside down provide a further rebus, since the word for ‘upside down’, dao, is pronounced similarly to the word for ‘arriving’, and thus an upside-down bat signifies 'happiness is arriving'.

Two court paintings further demonstrate the popularity of the bat motif at the Yongzheng court: a landscape by Chen Mei (c.1694-1745) with a large number of bats in the sky, inscribed Ten Thousand Blessings (bats) to the Emperor and presented to the Yongzheng Emperor on his birthday in the 4th year of his reign (1726) (fig. 1), ibid., cat. no. 270; and another, by court artist Jin Jie (fl. 18th century), depicting three elderly men in a landscape with red bats, titled Flying Bats Filling the Sky (i.e. Infinite Blessings), in Harmony and Integrity, op.cit., cat. no. II-112 (fig. 2).

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fig. 1. Chen Mei (C.1694-1745), Ten Thousand Blessings (Bats To The Emperor, Presented to the Yongzheng Emperor on his birthday in 1726, Ink and colour on silk. © Palace Museum, Beijing

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fig. 2. Jin Jie, Longevity As High As The Mountains, The 5th Leaf, Qing Dynasty, 18th Century, National Palace Museum, Taipei. 

Only a dozen comparable Yongzheng bowls of the peach-and-bat design are recorded. A pair was formerly in the collection of T.T. Tsui, published in The Tsui Museum of Art. Chinese Ceramics IV: Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1995, pl. 155, and The Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1991, pl. 119. The pair, now separated, was composed of a bowl that was sold in these rooms 14th November 1989, lot 315; at Christie's Hong Kong, 26th April 1999, lot 539; in our London rooms, 16th May 2007, lot 104; and in these rooms, 7th April 2015, lot 112, together with another similar bowl. The other bowl of the Tsui pair came from the John F. Woodthorpe and C.M. Moncrieff collections and was sold three times in our London rooms, 9th December 1952, lot 140; 6th April 1954, lot 106; and 21st February 1961, lot 171.

A pair formerly in the Eisei Bunko, Tokyo, an art collection with its origins in the Nanboku-cho period (1336-92) formed by the Hosokawa family, one of the top daimyo clans in Japan, is now also separated: one bowl entered the Meiyintang collection and was sold in these rooms on 5th October 2011, lot 16, the other, still in the Eisei Bunko today, is illustrated in Sekai tōji zenshū/Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 12, Tokyo, 1956, col. pl. 11. Another pair in the Baur collection, Geneva, is illustrated in John Ayers, The Baur Collection Geneva: Chinese Ceramics, Geneva, 1968-74, vol. 4, nos A 594 and 595. A pair from the collections of Chen Rentao, Paul and Helen Bernat and T. Endo was sold in these rooms 15th November 1988, lot 44, and 29th April 1997, lot 401, and at Christie's Hong Kong, 29th May 2007, lot 1374, and is illustrated in Sotheby's. Thirty Years in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2003, pl. 326. This pair is now also separated and one was included in the Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition: Twelve Chinese Masterworks, Eskenazi, London, 2010, cat. no. 11, while the other is in a private collection in Taiwan. Another pair was sold at Yamanaka & Co., London, 1938, and was included in their catalogue Chinese Ceramic Art, Bronze, Jade etc., no. 116, pl. 12 (illustrating one of the pair). Also known is one bowl from the Avery Brundage collection, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, published in Terese Tse Bartholomew, Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2006, p. 204, pl. 7.44.1.

One other related pair of different proportions, from the Allen J. Mercher and John M. Crawford, Jr. collections, was sold at Parke-Bernet New York, 10th October 1957, lot 261, and in these rooms, 24th May 1978, lot 252. The peach-and-bat design was also used for enamelling porcelains at the imperial workshops in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Compare a pair of Yongzheng falangcai porcelain bowls in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, also painted with peach trees and five bats, but in a less pronounced design, exhibited in Painted Enamels of Qing Yongzheng Period (1723-1735), National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2013, pl. 82.

Other Yongzheng vessel forms with the peach-and-bat design are also very rare. Compare a Yongzheng covered box formerly in the Van Slyke and Meiyintang collections, sold in these rooms 8th April 2013, lot 3036, which appears to be the only example recorded (fig. 3). Examples of large dishes include one from the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan, sold in these rooms, 29th April 1997, lot 400, and one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, in China. The Three Emperors 1662-1795, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2005-6, cat. no. 181. A group of smaller dishes is discussed in An Exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, London, 1993, cat. no. 92; see also an example in the British Museum, London, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 5, New York, 1981, col. pl. 67; and another dish in Denise Patry Leidy, Treasures of Asian Art. The Asia Society’s Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, New York, 1994, pl. 198. Other examples include a pair of Yongzheng dishes formerly in the collections of Barbara Hutton (1912-1979) and the British Rail Pension Fund, exhibited on loan at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1985-1988, illustrated in Sotheby's Hong Kong Twenty Years, Hong Kong, 1993, p. 202, no. 276, and sold twice in our London rooms, 6th July 1971, lot 265, and 8th July 1974, lot 408, twice in our Hong Kong rooms, 29th November 1977, lot 160, and 16th May 1989, lot 88, and recently at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28th May 2014, lot 3319. 

AN EXTREMELY RARE AND IMPORTANT MASSIVE GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF BODHISATTVA AVALOKITESHVARA

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Lot 3619. An Extremely Rare and Important Massive Gilt-Bronze Figure of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, Song Dynasty (960-1279); 61 cm. Estimate: HK$20,000,000 - 30,000,000 / US$2,600,000 - 3,900,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

well cast and portrayed seated in vajraparyankasana, the right hand lowered in varada mudra, while the left held in abhaya mudra, each hand marked with a half-shuttered eye, the serene face bearing a compassionate expression with eyes in a downward gaze, the forehead marked with a third eye, his slightly pursed lips framed by a scrolling mustache and beard, the hair neatly drawn up in an intricate jatamakuta securing three miniature effigies of bodhisattvas, with long tresses falling to the shoulders, wearing elaborate jewellery including hair ornaments with billowing sashes and dragon heads, circular studded earrings, beaded necklaces, armbands, bracelets and anklets, a shawl detailed with lotus scrolls around the bare shoulders flowing over the arms, a voluminous lower garment similarly incised with a couple of dragons interspersed within the design, and gathered at the waist and fastened by a beaded girdle.

The Enigmatic Avalokiteshvara
Regina Krahl

This gilt-bronze Avalokiteshvara figure is highly idiosyncratic in style and outstandingly rare, with only one other comparable sculpture being recorded, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, from the Avery Brundage collection. While its modelling and casting quality is beyond any doubt, it is not easy to immediately place it in the history of Chinese Buddhist bronze sculpting.

Buddhist gilt bronze figures were produced in China almost right from the start, when Buddhism was embraced by various courts in the period of China’s division after the Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220). Until the Tang dynasty (607-906), however, they remained very small. A first development away from small votive images took place already in the Khitan Liao dynasty (907-1125), when sculptures not only became bigger, but also underwent a stylistic treatment towards a more abstract sculptural beauty. Yet it was to take another important step before precious gilt-bronze images such as the present figure, in a size comparable to the much cheaper wooden sculptures, were commissioned. This development culminated in the Yongle period (1403-24), when the court took total control of their production – as it did for other artefacts, in particular porcelain and lacquer – and a distinct style was devised, which should become classic and determining for all future design of Buddhist gilt-bronze images.

It would seem that the sculptors of the present figure had not yet seen a Yongle image and were thus innocent enough to formulate their own style. Between Tang and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, a multitude of imperial and royal courts – the Five Dynasties (907-60), Liao, Song (960-1279), Jurchen Jin (1115-1234), Tangut Western Xia (1038-1227) and Mongol Yuan (1279-1368) – exerted influence on the appearance of works of art, both religious and secular, so that not one style gained overall acceptance. The stylistic variety of works of art in that period can therefore be overwhelming, and the artistic development is by no means one-directional.

The present sculpture is therefore something like a phare in an uncharted sea. It comes from a period when the Guanyin image had not yet turned sweet and feminine, and although the basic facial features suggest a woman’s face, the addition of small curls to indicate beard and moustache are an unmistakeable effort to counterbalance this effect. This way of representing Avalokiteshvara is characteristic of Tang painting executed at Dunhuang in Gansu province, either in form of wall paintings inside the Caves or banners and other textiles discovered there.

Models for the style of a figure such as this could have been sketches as were done for wall paintings, some of which have survived. An ink sketch of a Bodhisattva head, drawn on the reverse of an earlier Daoist manuscript that was used as scrap paper, has been discovered at Dunhuang and is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. It shows a very similar head with moustache and beard, sharply curved eyebrows, thick lips, neck with horizontal folds, and rich jewellery and ribbons; it was included in the exhibition Chine: L’empire du trait. Calligraphies et dessins du Ve au XIXe siècle, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, 2004, cat. no. 36a, where it has been tentatively attributed by Nathalie Monnet to the late Tang or Five Dynasties, 10th century (fig. 1).

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fig. 1. Ink Sketch of A Bodhisattva Head, Detail, Late Tang to Five Dynasties, 10th Century, Discovered at Dunhuang, Gansu© Bibliothèque Nationale de France

This sketch is echoed in a large number of Buddhist paintings from Dunhuang, done over an extended period from the late Tang through the Five Dynasties to the early Northern Song (960-1127) dynasty, which can be attributed to the 9th and 10th centuries. Compare, for example, paintings of Guanyin figures illustrated in Jacques Giès, Les arts de l’Asie central. La collection Paul Pelliot du musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris, 1996, vol. I, pls 52-72, and vol. II, pls 11-35.

A group of paintings attributable to the 10th century, the Five Dynasties to early Northern Song, shows an even closer Bodhisattva image with multiple heads similar to the present figure, often with an eye on the forehead and hands, also richly adorned with jewellery and often with similar facial features; see in particular Giès, op.cit., vol. I, pls 86, 89-93, and vol. II, pls 64 and 65 (figs 2 and 3).

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fig. 2. Avalokiteshvara with thousand arms and thousand eyes, detail, Northern Song dynasty, 10th century© Musée Guimet, Paris, Dist (NO. EO 1173). RMN-Grand Palais / Droits réservés

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fig. 3. Standing Avalokiteshvara With Eleven Heads, Five Dynasties To Northern Song Dynasty © Musée Guimet, Paris, Dist (NO. EO 3582). RMN-Grand Palais / Droits réservés

There is also a standing wooden Bodhisattva figure carved in a related style in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, possibly also from the Dunhuang Cave complex in Gansu, attributed to the 10th/11th century (with a radiocarbon date range of 970-1120), illustrated in Denise Patry Leidy and Lawrence Becker, Wisdom Embodied. Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, cat. no. A38.

Stylistically, facial features and proportions of this sculpture are also reminiscent of Guanyin images carved into the rock at the Huayan Caves, Anyue county, Sichuan province, which can be attributed to the Northern Song dynasty; see Zhongguo meishu quanji: Diaosu bian [Complete series on Chinese art: Sculpture section], 12: Sichuan shiku diaosu [Sichuan cave sculpture], Beijing, 1988, pls 128 and 130.

The closely related gilt-bronze Avalokiteshvara figure in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, which is lacking the rich ornaments and ribbons around the head, is illustrated in René-Yvon Lefebvre d’Argencé, ed., Chinese, Korean and Japanese Sculpture in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1974, pl. 159 (fig. 4).

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fig. 4. Gilt-Bronze Seated Figure of a Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara with Four Heads, Song Dynasty, The Avery Brundage Collection, B60s543 © Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Used By Permission.

While Yuan dynasty qingbai figures of similar size may at first glance seem closely related, they tend to be much softer and more distinctly feminine in appearance; see four Guanyin figures, from the collections of C.P. Lin, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, illustrated in Stacey Pierson, ed., Qingbai Ware: Chinese Porcelain of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, London, 2002, pls 119-22.

It is highly unusual to find a Bodhisattva figure wearing a dragon-decorated robe, but the dragons seen on the present gilt bronze also confirm a pre-Yuan attribution. Compare similar seemingly boneless incised dragons with the head almost dissolved into a cloud motif and three-clawed feet with nails not yet set off at an angle, on Song dynasty Ding wares, for example, a dish and a washer included in the exhibition Qianxi nian Songdai wenwu dazhan/China at the Inception of the Second Millennium: Art and Culture of the Sung Dynasty, 960-1279, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2000, cat. nos II-21 and III-17 (fig. 5).

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fig. 5. Dingyao dish with incised dragon, detail, Northern Song dynasty, 11th century, National Palace Museum, Taipei

ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

An Outstanding Blue and White Moonflask, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period (1403-1425)

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Lot 3608. An Outstanding Blue and White Moonflask, Ming Dynasty, Yongle Period  (1403-1425); 29.5 cm. Estimate: HK$15,000,000 - 20,000,000 / US$ 1,940,000 - 2,590,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

modelled after a Middle Eastern metal prototype, elegantly potted with a flattened spherical body with two domed sections, each side centred with a yin-yang medallion radiating an eight-pointed starburst, the foliate points interspersed between palmette or ornaments, all within a formal 'half-cash' diaper border around the edge, surmounted by a waisted neck and a small bulb-shaped mouth, collared by a foliate scroll band of aster and carnation, flanked by a pair of gracefully arched handles with terminals similarly adorned with floral sprays, all raised on a low oval foot, the cobalt blue of a brilliant tone with characteristic 'heaping and piling', Japanese wood box.

ProvenanceKochukyo Co. Ltd., Tokyo, 1980s.

Note: This flask represents one of the archetypal wares created at the imperial kilns in Jingdezhen during the early Ming dynasty, a design that appears to have been equally popular with the Chinese rulers as with foreign royalty. It belongs to a group of vessels which derived their inspiration from Persian prototypes and represented a new stylistic avenue for Chinese porcelain. The angular bulb and short oval foot are characteristic of Yongle flasks of this large size. Closely related examples 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 Qing court collection, preserved in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and included in the Museum’s exhibition Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous. Porcelains from the Yongle Reign (1403-1424) of the Ming Dynasty, 2017, pp. 140-141 (fig. 1); one from the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, included in the exhibition Seika jiki ten [Exhibition of blue and white porcelain], Matsuya Ginza, Tokyo, 1988, cat. no. 16; and another, from the Jingguantang and Huang Ding Xuan collections, included in the exhibition In Pursuit of Antiquities. 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 again, 28th November 2006, lot 1512. Another example was sold in our Paris rooms, 18th December 2009, lot 65.

A blue and white moonflask, Ming dynasty, Yongle period, Qing Court Collection, National Palace Museum, Taipei

fig. 1. A blue and white moonflask, Ming dynasty, Yongle period, Qing Court Collection, National Palace Museum, Taipei.

The same design is also found adorning one side of flasks of similar form, but of slightly smaller size and with larger rounded bulbs, the other side decorated with a related design of interlaced petals and ruyi motifs; for example see one exhibited in the Shihua Art Museum, Shanghai, 2010, and published in Zhao Yueting, ed., Huangdi de ciqi. Jingdezhen chutu 'Ming san dai' guanyao ciqi zhenpin huicui [Porcelains of the emperors. Compilation of imperial porcelain treasures of 'The Three Ming Reigns' excavated at Jingdezhen], Shanghai, 2010, pl. 23, together with a plain white flask without a foot attributed to the early Yongle period, pl. 19, and a blue-and-white Xuande-marked example with a rectangular foot, pl. 68. See also a Xuande mark and period flask from the Qing court collection in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, exhibited in Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous, op.cit., pp. 142-143 (fig. 2), together with two white-glazed examples of this form, one undecorated and the other incised with interlaced petals, pp. 136-139. The subtle evolution of the form and design over the decades can be traced in these flasks.

A blue and white moonflask, Ming dynasty, Mark and period of Xuande, Qing Court Collection, National Palace Museum, Taipei

fig. 2. A blue and white moonflask, Ming dynasty, Mark and period of Xuande (1426-1435), Qing Court Collection, National Palace Museum, Taipei.

The design and shape of this flask appear to have derived from Near or Middle Eastern pottery or metal prototypes, although no exact counterpart has yet been found. Its possible origin is discussed in Margaret Medley, 'Islam and Chinese Porcelain in the 14th and Early 15th Centuries', Bulletin of the Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong, no. 6, 1982-4, where a Xuande-marked flask in the Sir David Percival collection is illustrated, fig. 11; and in John Alexander Pope, 'An Early Ming Porcelain in Muslim Style', Aus der Welt der Islamischen Kunst. Festschrift für Ernst Kuhnel, Berlin, 1959, where another blue-and-white flask is published, pl. 3B, together with a large inlaid brass canteen with similar strap handles and 'garlic' mouth, pl. 1B, the latter from the Eumorfopoulos Collection, sold in our London rooms, 5th June 1940, lot 72, and now in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., no. F1941.10.

The star-shaped rosettes adorning either side of the flask are composed in a highly stylised and geometric manner. Both its formality and abstraction are unusual in a Chinese context and, together with the enclosing chevron and geometric border, are probably also the result of Middle Eastern inspiration. However, the traditional Chinese design repertoire is represented through the flower-scroll band at the neck and the small floral sprigs at the handles, although the combination of asters and carnations is rare. The delicacy of the floral elements also serves to soften the rigidity of the overall design. Flasks of this model were popular during and peculiar to the Yongle and Xuande periods.

An Extremely Rare and Superb Blue and White 'Lotus Scroll' Vase, Yuhuchunping, Ming Dynasty, Chenghua Period (1465-1487)

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Lot 3609. An Extremely Rare and Superb Blue and White 'Lotus Scroll' Vase, Yuhuchunping, Ming Dynasty, Chenghua Period (1465-1487); 30.3 cm. Estimate: HK$12,000,000 - 18,000,000 / US$1,560,000-2,330,000Courtesy Sotheby's.

beautifully potted with a pear-shaped body rising from a splayed foot, elegantly sweeping up to a waisted neck flaring at the rim, the exterior boldly painted with large lotus blooms borne on a leafy meander above overlapping petal lappets, below upright plantain leaves, an undulating lingzhi scroll and pendent trefoils encircling the neck, all divided by line borders repeated at the rim and the foot, covered overall in an unctuous glaze with a faint bluish tinge.

Provenance: Collection of Y.C. Chen.
Christie's Hong Kong, 29th May 2013, lot 1936.

Towards a Distinctive Style: A Superb Chenghua Vase

Blue and white wares of the Chenghua period are extremely rare. Even rarer are those of such exceptional quality, upright form and large size. Chenghua porcelain in general displays a very distinct character both in terms of material and style of decoration. Initially heavily influenced by the attractive style of the Xuande reign, the Chenghua potters gradually developed their own distinctive sophisticated style by making a deliberate move away from earlier models, perhaps most evident in the idiosyncratic forms and designs they developed. The present vase is a fine and unique example of such transformation; while its motifs and form are rooted in traditions established from the beginnings of the Ming dynasty, they are presented in an unusual yet strikingly elegant manner. Veiled with a lustrous silky glaze, this vase can be identified as a mid-Chenghua period creation. ‘Softer’ to the touch than its predecessors, it marks a departure from the crisp and glossy glazes of the finest Xuande wares and towards the muted, velvety glaze of the famous Chenghua palace bowls.

The depiction of the lotus on this vase, with voluminous blooms occasionally accentuated by a ruyi head in the centre, closely follows earlier examples from the interregnum period. The tones of the cobalt used on interregnum porcelain, however, are oftentimes greyer than their Chenghua counterparts. See a double-gourd vase decorated with a similar continuous scroll of lotus, excavated from the interregnum stratum in the Ming imperial kiln site in 2014, included in the exhibition Refilling the Interregnum: Newly Discovered Imperial Porcelains from Zhengtong, Jingtai and Tianshun Reigns (1436-1464) of the Ming Dynasty, Hong Kong, 2019, cat. no. 22. With these new archaeological discoveries, some of the ceramics traditionally attributed to the Chenghua period can probably be re-dated to the interregnum period. A closely related double-gourd vase in the Tokyo National Museum, for instance, is now believed to be from the Zhengtong period (ibid., pp. 33-35, fig. 41), but another example in the Palace Museum, Beijing, attributed to the Chenghua period by Geng Baochang in Ming Qing ciqi jiandin [Appraisal of Ming and Qing Porcelains] (Hong Kong, 1993, fig. 167) remains to be categorised as Chenghua in Imperial Porcelains from the Reign of Chenghua in the Ming Dynasty I, Beijing, 2016, pl. 9 (fig. 1).

A Blue And White 'Lotus' Double-Gourd Vase, Ming Dynasty, Chenghua Period © Palace Museum, Beijing

 

fig.  1. A Blue And White 'Lotus' Double-Gourd Vase, Ming Dynasty, Chenghua Period © Palace Museum, Beijing

The design of the plantain leaves and the double-outlined lingzhi scroll collaring the neck of the present vase are reminiscent of earlier ceramics. A meiping decorated with vibrant double-outlined foliate scrolls between plantain leaves, was excavated together with its cover, and published in Refilling the Interregnum, op.cit., cat. no. 21. A closely related pair of meiping, with glaze and cobalt closer to the Xuande type, is preserved in private hands. The pair from the collection of Robert C. Bruce, was sold in our London rooms, 12th May 1953, lot 87, one of which entered the H.R.N. Norton and J.T. Tai collections, and sold in our London rooms, 5th November 1963, lot 160, and again in these rooms, 8th October 2010, lot 2622, the other sold in our London rooms 1st/2nd April 1974, lot 197, and again in these rooms, 16th May 1989, lot 18, from the British Rail Pension Fund.

Each concise yet freely painted stroke is visible on the decoration of this vase and reflects the intentional and derivative nature of the changing aesthetic of the era. By the mid-15th century, the supply of Lajiward cobalt that for decades had been imported from the Middle East was nearing exhaustion. As a result, the government began to mine the domestic Bo Tang mine in Jingdezhen. This elegant mid-hue pigment, with multiple rich and light distinct layers, was distinctively different from the deep and intense colour characteristic of early-Ming porcelain. Ink-like in texture and more even than the foreign type, the pigment was devoid of ‘heaping and piling’; thus designs that highlighted the beauty of this type of cobalt were developed. The individually rendered lotus petals and the carefully shaded stiff leaves of the present piece point to the control craftsmen were able to exert over the medium, and the resulting ink painting effect they were able to achieve. 

The minor alterations to the classic yuhuchun form result in a decidedly different product. The shape was favoured by the Hongwu Emperor and subsequently adorned with a variety of decorative bands, a style that continued to be developed and modified in the succeeding Yongle and Xuande reigns. The elegant silhouette of the present vase is achieved through two modifications from its predecessors: a taller splayed foot with a countersunk stepped base and a slightly higher swell of the body. To complement its streamlined form, the craftsman has skilfully incorporated white negative space as an important design element in order to capture an overall fresh sense of harmony and modernity. 

It is notable that the trio of bands on the neck, namely the tightly drawn stiff leaves, the foliate scroll and ruyi heads, is rarely found on Ming vases yet was adopted as the standard design for yuhuchunping in the 18th century; only one other Yongle vase adorned with a similar scheme, its body painted with a garden of banana leaves, bamboo and rocks, appears to have been published, from the Qing court collection, preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing, and included in the Museum’s exhibition Imperial Porcelains from the reigns of Hongwu and Yongle in the Ming Dynasty, 2015, cat. no. 103. Notably, this Yongle vase also has a short-flared foot, which is more akin to that of the present vase and notably distinct from the commonly used straight foot. 

Chenghua period vessels are rare, with the majority of extant examples consisting of smaller utility vessels such as bowl and dishes. Liu Xinyuan describes the volume of fragments recovered from the site of the Ming imperial kilns at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, where the Chenghua fragments equal less than half those unearthed from the Xuande stratum, even though the latter period was much shorter (see Liu Xinyuan, 'Reconstructing Chenghua Porcelain from Historical Records', The Emperor's Broken china: Reconstructing Chenghua Porcelain, Sotheby's London, 1995, p. 11).

For other large vessels made in the Chenghua period, see a bottle vase painted with phoenix among lotus scrolls attributed to the late Chenghua period, published in The Emperor's Broken chinaop.cit., pl. 47, together with a fragmentary ewer, painted in vivid cobalt blue and attributed to the mid Chenghua period, pl. 48. Compare also a meiping and a jar, both painted with plantain leaves and attributed to the Chenghua period, included in Geng Baochang, op.cit., pp. 88-89, figs 150 and 152; and a pear-shape vase decorated with similarly rendered lotus scrolls, on a tall flared foot and flanked with handles, from the collection of L.A. Basmadgieff, sold in our London rooms, 11th December 1979, lot 278, and again in these rooms, 8th April 2011, lot 3199.

Gilt copper alloy figure of Maitreya achieves top lot at Bonhams Asia Week sales

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Lot 616. A gilt copper alloy figure of Maitreya, Khasa Malla, Nepal, 13th-14th century, Himalayan Art Resources item no.16802,12 1/2 in. (31.8 cm) high. Sold for US$ 680,075 (€ 584,558).Photo: Bonhams.

NEW YORK, NY.- A 13th /14th century gilt copper alloy figure of Maitreya from the Khasa Malla kingdom was the top lot of Bonhams’ marquee Asia Week sales in New York. Sold on 23 September at the Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art Sale, the cover lot realised US$ 680,075, well exceeding its pre-sale estimate of US$ 400,000–600,000.

An exceptional bronze for its size and clear refinement, the sculpture depicts Maitreya – the bodhisattva of loving kindness – seated in a relaxed posture of ease on an exquisitely modelled blooming lotus, with his right hand raised to reassure his followers. Despite his languid pose, his toes remain flexed, a delightful detail that signals the bodhisattva remains alert from his celestial abode to the suffering of others.

Edward Wilkinson, Bonhams’ Global Head of the Indian, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian Art and Executive Director, Asia, commented: “The superb and magnetic figure of Maitreya achieved a great price consistent with a buoyant market. Strong results were also seen across all areas within the category, and we anticipate the momentum to continue into our Hong Kong sale of Images of Devotion on 5 October.”

Dessa Goddard, US Head, Asian Art at Bonhams, added: “We are delighted to see an Asian art market buoyed by strong resilience. Despite global developments this year, collectors want to collect. Fresh, rare and high-quality properties with good provenance continue to attract active and deep bidding from our international clientele across sales. We look forward to our upcoming Asian art sales in Hong Kong, London, Sydney and Los Angeles, as well as the online-only sales on Bonhams.com.”

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Lot 616. A gilt copper alloy figure of Maitreya, Khasa Malla, Nepal, 13th-14th century, Himalayan Art Resources item no.16802,12 1/2 in. (31.8 cm) high. Sold for US$ 680,075 (€ 584,558). Photo: Bonhams..

Provenance: Chino Roncoroni
Private Swiss Collection, acquired from the Paris Art Market, 2009.

Note: This magnificent gilt bronze sculpture of Maitreya, The Future Buddha, originates from the enigmatic Khasa Malla kingdom, which ruled the Karnali Basin of western Nepal and part of western Tibet between the 12th and 14th centuries. The bronze is quite exceptional, not only for its size, being larger than most identified Khasa Malla bronzes, but also for its clear refinement and beauty.

Maitreya, whose name derives from the Sanskrit word 'maitri', meaning 'benevolence' or 'loving kindness', is shown seated here in lalitasana—a relaxed posture of ease—one leg folded and the other pendant, while he leans on his left wrist. Despite his languid pose, his toes remain flexed, which is a delightful detail that signals the bodhisattva remains alert from his celestial abode to the suffering of others. With a puckered smile, he raises his right hand in abhaya mudra to reassure his followers. From the sculpture's base rise two exquisitely modeled lotuses in bloom by his shoulders, the left supporting a kundika vase. The vase is an attribute used to identify Maitreya, along with the miniature stupa surmounting his tall chignon.

Mastering both detail and form, the artist has created a resplendent gilded image with an elegant presence. Draped over the figure's left shoulder is an antelope skin, which is a relatively uncommon iconographic feature for Maitreya in Tibetan art, more often seen in Nepalese and Mongolian sculpture (e.g. HAR 21853, 57205, 61523 & 65413). The deerskin's diminutive size adds a sense of monumentality to the bodhisattva who wears it. Maitreya's smooth, golden skin and shapely physique provide a perfect foil for his jewelry's crisp definition. Lavish silks in the form of a short, pleated dhoti grace his thighs, incised with delicate patterns that attest to the artist's dexterity.

Despite the Khasa Malla kingdom being known to western scholars from historical records by the mid-20th century, it was not until 1994 that the first artwork was securely attributed to them. While researching an idiosyncratic gilt bronze goddess in the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington D.C. (1986.23M), Ian Alsop discovered the kingdom being mentioned by name in the inscription (see Alsop, "The Metal Sculpture of the Khasa Malla Kingdom" in Singer & Denwood (eds.), Tibetan Art, Towards a Definition of Style, London, 1997, pp.68-79). Since then a number of paintings and sculptures have been attributed to the Khasa Mallas, whose enthusiastic Buddhist patronage gave rise to a distinctive sculptural tradition of marked quality.

The art of the Khasa Mallas took inspiration from its neighboring cultures, incorporating stylistic elements from the Kathmandu Valley, West Tibet, and Pala India. As the Khasa Mallas had close contact with the Newars in Kathmandu, influences from the Valley frequently prevail. For example, the present figure's sensuous modeling and broad countenance are characteristic of the famed Newari 'Standing Padmapanis', such as one contemporaneous to the present sculpture, held by the Rubin Museum of Art (C2005.16.8).

Many stylistic details used to identify Khasa Malla bronzes are not exclusive to the kingdoms' style, but their aggregation generally distinguishes them from other known artistic traditions. One notable Khasa Malla feature absent from the present bronze is a detailing of the figure's knuckles. However, this bronze displays another strong Khasa Malla feature by the manner in which the sash fanning out before the ankles is cast on the base rather than the figure. Other typical characteristics are the base's plain back and large beaded upper rim. In contrast to the Rubin Padmapani (C2005.16.8), the present bronze exhibits the Khasa Malla's predilection for fleshier faces and figures, further pronouncing the auspiciousness of a well-nourished being unencumbered by the harsh realities of mortal existence. Relaxed and awaiting his messianic charge, this perfectly cast apparition of The Future Buddha is a masterpiece of Khasa Malla sculpture.

Other notable prices achieved in this week of Bonhams’ Asia Week sale series include:

Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art Sale (23 September)

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Lot 626. A Pair of Silver and Gilt Copper Alloy Figures of The Seventh Karmapa Chodrak Gyatso and The Fourth Sharmapa Chokyi Drakpa, Tibet, Late 15th /16th Century. Tibetan inscriptions at the back of each figure's lotus base, translated: "Homage to the glorious Karmapa Chodrak Gyatso!" and "Homage to Chokyi Drakpa who wears the long-eared red hat!". Himalayan Art Resources item nos.68493 & 68494. Karmapa: 3 1/2 in. (8.9 cm) high; Sharmapa: 3 3/8 in. (8.6 cm) high. Sold for US$ 437,575. Over four times the estimate: US$ 100,000–150,000Photo: Bonhams.

Provenance: The Collection of Mrs. James W. Alsdorf (Karmapa only)
Sotheby's, New York, 5 December 1992, lot 52 (Karmapa only)
The Nyingjei Lam Collection
On loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1996 – 2005
On loan to the Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 2005 – 2019.

Published: David Weldon and Jane Casey Singer, The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, London, 1999, pp.180-1, pls.44&44a.
F. Ricca, Arte Buddhista Tibetana: Dei e Demoni dell' Himalaya, Turin, 2004, figs.IV.57&58.

Exhibited: The Sculptural Heritage of Tibet: Buddhist Art in the Nyingjei Lam Collection, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 6 October – 30 December 1999.
Arte Buddhista Tibetana: Dei e Demoni dell' Himalaya, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, June – September 2004.
Stable as a Mountain: Gurus in Himalayan Art, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 13 March – 13 July 2009.
Lama, Patron, Artist: The Great Situ Panchen, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 13 March – 18 July 2010.
Casting the Divine: Sculptures of the Nyingjei Lam Collection, Rubin Museum of Art, New York, 2 March 2012 – 11 February 2013.

Note: It is extremely rare to find silver portraits of such remarkable quality surviving in pairs. It is all the more satisfying here that each figure represents one of two complementary branches of the Karma Kagyu school's leadership—made known thanks to the lasting red and black pigments on their hats. It is the Karmapa, wearing a black hat, who identifies the next incarnate Sharmapa, wearing a red hat, and the Sharmapa who identifies the next incarnate Karmapa. Seated on matching gilt-bronze lotus bases, the two hierarchs are flawlessly represented wearing chased silver garments that testify to the hand of a virtuoso.

The two teachers are identified by their inscriptions as the Seventh Karmapa Chodrak Gyatso (1454-1506), and his student, the Fourth Sharmapa Chokyi Drakpa (1453-1524). The Seventh Karmapa is remembered for being a compassionate leader and an accomplished scholar. He is said to have brokered peace among local tribes in southern Tibet. The Seventh Karmapa also established seminaries at Tsurphu monastery and Chokhor Lhumpo, and authored important exegesis, including the Lamp of the Three Worlds, a commentary on Asanga's Abhisamayalankara. Meanwhile, the Fourth Sharmapa was a primary disciple of the Seventh Karmapa and supervised Go Lotsawa Zhonupel (1392-1481), who authored The Blue Annals, a principal survey of Tibetan history.

These two sculptures were likely commissioned by a student of the Fourth Sharmapa either during the Sharmapa's lifetime or shortly thereafter. No other pieces from the same commission are known, which would otherwise indicate the pair are part of a larger lineage set. Further to the contrary, the artist has paired the two hierarchs with matching physiques, robes, and hand gestures (mudras).

Silver is a rarer commodity considered more precious than gold in Tibet. In sculpture, it is generally used sparingly as inlay, rather than a figure being cast outright from the costly metal. However, silver sculptures were produced for wealthy patrons who wanted to stress their reverence for the subject and enhance the merit generated by their commission with more costly materials. Pairing a silver figure with a gilt-bronze base was also popular, a practice that was adopted early in the Himalayas by the Khasa Mallas, who ruled the Karnali Basin of western Nepal and part of western Tibet between the 12th and 14th centuries. In fact, the plump petals on these two sculptures, embellished with tiny engraved markings, appear to take inspiration from Khasa Malla sculpture. See a bronze Hevajra and a silver lama above a gilt-bronze base in Alsop, "The Metal Sculpture of the Khasa Malla Kingdom", in Orientations: Art of Tibet, Hong Kong, 1998, p.165, fig.6 and von Schroeder, Buddhist Sculptures of the Alain Bordier Foundation, Hong Kong, 2010, pp.28-9, pl.11, respectively. Other examples of silver portraits on gilt-bronze lotus bases include a Padmasambhava in the Rubin Museum of Art (Collection Highlights, New York, 2014, pp.138-9), and a Sangye Chopa published in Grewenig & Rist (eds.), Buddha: 2000 Years of Buddhist Art,, Völklingen, 2016, p.456, no.201.

Chinese Paintings and Works of Art Sale (21 September)

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Lot 246. Qi Baishi (1862-1957), Narcissus, Rock and Quail. Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, inscribed by the artist with a poetic inscription and signed Qi Huang with one artist's seal reading Muren. 61 1/4 x 16 3/4in (155.5 x 42.5cm). Sold for US$ 437,575. Over five times the estimate: US$ 80,000–120,000Photo: Bonhams.

ProvenanceFar East Fine Arts, San Francisco, California.

PublishedJung Ying Tsao, The Paintings of Xugu and Qi Baishi, 1993, no 5, pp. 266-269.

NoteThe subject of narcissus is relatively rare in the oeuvre of Qi Baishi. Of the few instances of the artist rendering this springtime flower, most date from the 1920s and 1930s, a likely dating for the present work as well. Translated in the 1993 publication, the poem reads:

Cold snow, chilly wind, cracked ice:
This is the season when the narcissus blooms.
With whom will the flowers speak of friendship,
Under the trees, the bright moon and delicate plum blossoms?

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Lot 186. A Pair of Jade and Hardstone Overlay Lacquer Panels, Imperial Workshops, 18th Century; 41 5/8 x 28 1/4in (105.7 x 71.8cm), including the frame (2). Sold for US$ 387,575. Over 19 times the estimate: US$ 20,000–30,000Photo: Bonhams.

Each lacquered panel embellished with inset jade, coral, wood and other semiprecious stones to form birds and flower blossoms on an light ochre lacquered ground, both with three incised poems in clerical script with the signature of the calligrapher chen Jin Jian, each with a hardwood frame carved with bats and clouds, with silver wire inlay to the inner border.

Note: The style and quality of these panels compare favorably with those depicted in Nancy Berliner et al (2010) The Emperor's Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, pp 102-103 cat. 25. See as well ibid, passim for numerous other objects with similar quality and style hardstone overlay. Those published pieces all were meant to adorn the Juanqin Zhai, Qianlong's 'Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service' in a corner of the Forbidden City for him to enjoy towards the end of his career and through his subsequent assumption of the role of 'Emperor Emeritus' in 1795. In addition to imperial poems, the present lot is also inscribed with poems signed by the 18th century Manchu official Jin Jian, known for his poetry and assigned by Qianlong to the editing of the Siku Quanshu huiyao as well as other literary tasks throughout his long career

Fine Japanese and Korean Art (24 September)

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Lot 1046. A Large and Fine Porcelain Moon Flask, Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897), 16th /17th Century; 9 7/8in (25cm) high. Sold for US$ 87,575. Estimate: US$ 70,000–80,000Photo: Bonhams.

The circular vase with flattened sides, an upright neck ending in a rolled rim, and set on a raised oval-shaped foot, the surface covered in a transparent glaze showing a slight blue cast where it has pooled, the foot ring unglazed. With a wood tomobako storage box.

NoteFor other white porcelain moon flasks, see Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea, Korean Arts, vol. 2, Ceramics, Seoul, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea, 1961, cat. no. 98; Kungnip Chungang Pangmulgwan, Park Byong-rae suijib ijo doja/ Donated Pieces of Yi Porcelain from the Collection of Dr. Park Byong-rae, exhibition catalogue, National Museum of Korea, 1974, cat. no. 49; Rhee Byung-chang, Kankoku bijutsu shushu/ Masterpieces of Korean Art, Tokyo, Tokyo University Press, 1978, cat. no. 146; Jin Wianlong, ed., Ijo doja, baegjyayeon (Yi Porcelain, White Porcelain), 1979, cover image and cat. no. 14
For a similar undecorated white porcelain moon flask dated to the sixteenth century, compare an example in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, acc. No.00153, http://jmapps.ne.jp/mocoor_e/det.html?data_id=1051

Undecorated Korean white porcelain vessels such as this have been eagerly collected both within and beyond East Asia for more than a century and have provided inspiration for artists as varied as British ceramist Bernard Leach, Korean painters including Kim Whanki, and many of the country's contemporary potters, contributing to global perceptions of the purity and minimalism of the traditional national aesthetic. Although a few white wares had been made earlier, their predominance dates from the late fifteenth century, when the royal court established a kiln complex at Gwangju that would operate for over four centuries as an official ceramic factory on the Chinese imperial model. The products of the bunwon kilns became so popular among the country's bureaucratic elite that similar wares were soon being made throughout the peninsula, precipitating a decline in the slip-inlaid buncheong ware that had been the ceramic of choice during the previous two centuries. Although the proliferation of production sites makes it difficult to assign the present flask to a specific location, its powerful, precise modeling, well-controlled glaze effects, and characteristic short neck and a low foot point to a date of manufacture not long after the classic example cited above.

Flasks of this type were typically made by throwing two near-identical dishes and then "luting" (joining) their rims with wet clay and applying a separately modeled mouth and foot. From the seventeenth century onward, decorated white wares were also in vogue, with lively, informal motifs such as those on the following lot, often painted in underglaze iron brown instead of the more costly cobalt blue

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Lot 1020. A Haramaki Cuirass, Muromachi (1333-1573) or Momoyama (1573-1615) Period, Late 16th Century. Sold for US$ 68,825. More than doubling the estimate: US$ 25,000–35,000Photo: Bonhams.

The hon-kozane cuirass assembled from alternating iron and leather scales lacquered and laced together in white, orange, and purple silk, and blue doe skin, with seven sections of five-lame kusazuri, the munaita and waki no ita applied with stenciled doe skin and trimmed along the top edge with the original fukurin, some of the original lacing and much of the original gilt-copper kanamono intact. With a wood storage box, no armor stand.

Elegant Embellishments Sale (21 September)

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Lot 329. A Crystal and Gold Bead Necklace. Sold for: US$ 15,075. Estimate: US$ 10,000–15,000Photo: Bonhams.

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