finely potted, the deep U-shaped sides supported on a straight foot and rising to a gently everted rim, the exterior delicately painted to one side with peony stems springing forth from behind gnarled rockwork, their long leafy stems swaying under the weight of their luscious blooms, the tonality of the cobalt deliberately calibrated to convey depth and imitate the natural variegation of peony petals and leaves, accompanied by a poetic couplet inscribed on the opposite side and followed by a seal reading shang ('to appreciate'), the base with a six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle.

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

Exhibited: An Exhibition of the Paul Baerwald Collection of Chinese Porcelain, John Sparks, London, 1937, cat. no. 53. 

Note: This delicately potted cup depicting flowering peony bushes, accompanied by complementary two-lined poems, exemplifies a classic design of the Kangxi period. It represents the fourth month of the year, and would have originally been part of a set of twelve cups each depicting seasonal flowers. Cups of this type were known to have been used for wine drinking at court during the Kangxi period.  The poem can be translated as:

Xiao yan yuan fen jin zhang lu. Mu xiang shen re yu tang feng.

'At dawn its beauty receives dew from a golden palm. In the evening the fragrance penetrates deep into the Jade Hall.'

Compare a full set of blue and white month cups from the Qing Court Collection and still in Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), Hong Kong, 2000, pl. 71; a ‘peony’ month cup sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 27th November 2013; and another sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 1st November 1994, lot 134. 

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art, New York, 12 sept. 2018, 10:30 AM