Rare et important repose-coupe en laque rouge sculpté, Marque et époque Yongle. Estimation 200,000 — 300,000 €. Photo Sotheby's.
de forme globulaire aux côtés arrondis se prolongeant vers le bord incurvé, reposant sur une coupe à sept lobes et un haut pied évasé, le pourtour profondément sculpté dans d'épaisses couches de laque d'un buissonnant feuillage dans lequel s'épanouissent six fleurs de camélia, grenade, pivoine, chrysanthème, hibiscus et gardénia, le même décor répété sur les deux faces de la coupe et autour du pied, l'intérieur et le pied laqués brun foncé, marque verticale à six caractères incisée à l'intérieur du bord du pied. Diam. 21,4 cm; 8 3/8 in.
A VERY RARE AND IMPORTANT CARVED CINNABAR LACQUER BOWL STAND, YONGLE MARK AND PERIOD
Notes: The technique of carved lacquerware was not new in the Ming dynasty, but had been developed in the Southern Song (1127-1279). In the Yuan period (1279-1368) this branch of artistry experienced a first flowering but, like with porcelain, the Yuan style of lacquer carving is bold and vigorous, and still somewhat rough and angular. In the Ming dynasty, this form of decoration was transformed into a highly sophisticated art form, as the overall layout meticulously worked out beforehand, and the carving style developed towards softer and rounder reliefs that were not only pared with a knife but carefully smoothed down and polished.
The Yongle Emperor made China’s finest artefacts imperial and introduced a style of unprecedented elegance and sophistication. In order to make China’s works of art suitable ‘ambassadors’ of the Ming Empire, the court took over porcelain as well as lacquer workshops, carefully monitored their production, emphasized quality control in order to maximize quality, and created an unmistakable identity for the imperial products. Like porcelain, carved lacquer was manufactured for the court, and probably in the same way as porcelain, lacquer was produced according to well-defined specifications, its production process monitored by the court, secrecy strictly guarded by the court, and distribution organized by the court and assured through official channels.
The Yongle Emperor repeatedly made gifts of lacquer ware to the Japanese Shogun. An important Ming document recording gifts from the court of the Yongle Emperor to the Ashikaga Shogun of Japan lists 203 pieces of carved red lacquer sent by the Chinese court to the Japanese ruler between 1403 and 1407, with the most important gift of fifty-eight pieces occurring in the first year of the Yongle reign. The first list of gifts to Japan in 1403, which is detailed enough to make identification possible, includes ‘mallow-shaped bowl stands … carved … with flowers of the four seasons’, like lot 112, of which two examples were sent to the Shogun.
Since the laborious, time-consuming process of creating vessels with a lacquer layer thick enough to be carved can extend over years, it is considered impossible that the whole process could have been completed within the first year of the reign. It equally seems out of the question that such work could have been done in the unruly times of the short Jianwen period (1399-1402), particularly as the Emperor is known to have ordered all works that were not vital to be stopped. Pieces such as a companion bowl stand from the Baoyizhai collection, recently sold in our Hong Kong rooms, have therefore been attributed to the Hongwu period (1368-98).
Closely related seven-lobed bowl stands carved with seasonal flowers are in the Palace Museum, Beijing, inscribed with a Yongle reign mark published in Zhongguo qiqi quanji [Complete series on Chinese lacquer], Fuzhou, 1993-8, vol. 5, pl. 26; in the Seikadō Bunko Art Museum, Tokyo, without reign mark, included in the exhibition Carved Lacquer, Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya, and Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, Tokyo, 1984, cat. no. 83; and one from the Baoyizhai collection, inscribed with a Xuande over a Yongle reign mark, included in the exhibition 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer, Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong and the Art Gallery, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1993, cat. no. 46, was sold in our London rooms, 13th December 1983, lot 56, and recently in our Hong Kong rooms, 8th October 2014, lot 3210.
Sotheby's. Arts d'Asie. Paris. 10 juin 2015, 10:30 AM