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Lot Essay
Only one other Qianlong-marked vase of this rare combination of shape and decoration appears to have been published. Now in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England, accession no. EA1971.37, it had been in the collection of the well-known English collector, George de Menasce, and was illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, The George de Menasce Collection, Part I, Spink, London, 1971, p. 44, no. 162. (Fig. 1)
The stylized animal heads that form the top of the handles have sometimes been described as elephant heads but, with the single horn on top combined with the large eyes, they may be highly stylized rhinoceros heads. Variously decorated vases of this shape and with similar stylized handles which, however, have the addition of stationary rings 'suspended' from the handles, were also made during not only the Qianlong period, but also the Yongzheng period. A Yongzheng-marked example with a teadust glaze in the collection of Lord Cunliffe is illustrated by S. Jenyns in Later Chinese Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. CIV 2, and also included in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition, The Ceramic Art of China, London, 1951, pl. 164, no. 242, where the heads on the handles are called elephant heads. One with a Qianlong mark, decorated in underglaze blue with flower scroll on the body and neck between decorative borders, in the Huaihaitang Collection, is illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, Ethereal Elegance, Art Museum, Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 11 November 2007 - 30 March 2008, pp. 296-97, no. 101. Another Qianlong-marked soft paste porcelain vase of this latter type, with archaistic relief decoration under a white glaze, is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and illustrated by S. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1988, p. 264, no. 268.
The stylized animal heads that form the top of the handles have sometimes been described as elephant heads but, with the single horn on top combined with the large eyes, they may be highly stylized rhinoceros heads. Variously decorated vases of this shape and with similar stylized handles which, however, have the addition of stationary rings 'suspended' from the handles, were also made during not only the Qianlong period, but also the Yongzheng period. A Yongzheng-marked example with a teadust glaze in the collection of Lord Cunliffe is illustrated by S. Jenyns in Later Chinese Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. CIV 2, and also included in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition, The Ceramic Art of China, London, 1951, pl. 164, no. 242, where the heads on the handles are called elephant heads. One with a Qianlong mark, decorated in underglaze blue with flower scroll on the body and neck between decorative borders, in the Huaihaitang Collection, is illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, Ethereal Elegance, Art Museum, Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 11 November 2007 - 30 March 2008, pp. 296-97, no. 101. Another Qianlong-marked soft paste porcelain vase of this latter type, with archaistic relief decoration under a white glaze, is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and illustrated by S. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1988, p. 264, no. 268.