Lot Essay
Previously sold in Hong Kong, 29 October 1991, lot 85.
It is very rare to find moonflasks of this form with a robin's egg glaze. Compare the only other recorded example of slightly shorter and broader proportions, also with an incised Qianlong seal mark, sold in Hong Kong, 21 May 1979, lot 105 and included in the Christie's London Special exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, 1993, Catalogue, no. 48.
The extraordinary effect of this glaze is achieved with the use of copper and arsenic as an opacifier to achieve an opaque stippled turquoise glaze. Kerr, Ceramics, notes that while visual examination reveals there to be two distinctive types of robin's-egg glaze, one streaked with copper-red and the other stippled with blotches of turquoise and dark blue, further analysis is needed to clarify the chemistry of these glazes; ibid., verbatim, p. 88.
(US$120,000-150,000)
It is very rare to find moonflasks of this form with a robin's egg glaze. Compare the only other recorded example of slightly shorter and broader proportions, also with an incised Qianlong seal mark, sold in Hong Kong, 21 May 1979, lot 105 and included in the Christie's London Special exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, 1993, Catalogue, no. 48.
The extraordinary effect of this glaze is achieved with the use of copper and arsenic as an opacifier to achieve an opaque stippled turquoise glaze. Kerr, Ceramics, notes that while visual examination reveals there to be two distinctive types of robin's-egg glaze, one streaked with copper-red and the other stippled with blotches of turquoise and dark blue, further analysis is needed to clarify the chemistry of these glazes; ibid., verbatim, p. 88.
(US$120,000-150,000)