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Lot Essay
The couplet can be translated:
Speckles of prunus flowers add to my leisurely mood;
A smattering of bird songs relieves my laboured heart.
The seals are:
Yuci yujin jicui: Imperial gift; Deep Gold and Dense Green
Tang Ying zhiyin: Seal of Tang Ying
Jun Gong (a sobriquet of Tang Ying)
The supervisor of the Imperial kilns at Jingdezhen during the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, Tang Ying (1683-1756), was not only one of the most efficient and innovative supervisors in the history of Chinese porcelain production, but also an accomplished calligrapher and poet. This very rare pair of panels is a fine example combining his three favourite subjects: porcelain, calligraphy and poetry. They show the consummate skills of the Jingdezhen potters to convey calligraphic brush strokes in clay. The characters are so masterfully rendered that on first glance they look as if indeed written by a brush. The fluidity of the strokes, the composition of the characters and the way the dry brush drags across the surface of the paper are all faithfully replicated in porcelain.
Excavations from the Imperial kiln sites at Zhushan in Jingdezhen have yielded similar porcelain shards of characters, as well as an unglazed seal with the mark 'Jun Gong' (Tang Ying's sobriquet) which is identical to the seal found on the current panels. The phrase Yuci Yujin Jicui could be a poetic title (usually adopted by scholars) given to Tang Ying by either the Yongzheng or Qianlong Emperor. Although there are no published records in establishing whether the title was an imperial gift to Tang Ying, similar calligraphic titles were given by Emperor Kangxi to Tang Ying's predecessor at the Imperial kilns, Lang Tingji (1663-1715). Among these include: Buze xijiang, 'Wide Benevolence to the West River'; Yuci Chunyi Tang, 'Imperial Gift (for) the Hall of Pure Unity'; Qing Shen, 'Uncorrupt and Vigilant'. Lang Tingji had the Yuci Chunyi Tang marks inscribed onto porcelain, an example of which is a blue-glazed bowl in the Percival David Foundation illustrated by Ming Wilson in Rare Marks of Chinese Porcelains, London, 1998, no. 35, pp. 90-91.
The only other known pair of porcelain-inlaid lacquer panels with Tang Ying's calligraphy appears to be in the collection of Eisei Bunko Museum, Tokyo, illustrated in Chugoku Bijutsu Shiho ten, Tokyo, 1981, no. 59 (fig. 1). The writing style of the current panels is undoubtedly that of Tang Ying's, and closely compares to the calligraphy also written by him on a water pot now in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated by Geng Baochang in Qingdai Yuyao Ciqi, Vol. I-b, Beijing, 2005, p. 9 (fig. 2). Note the characters 'hua' and ' dian' especially are written in exactly the same way on the panels and the water pot. Compare also to a small cup with Tang Ying's calligraphy sold in at Christie's Hong Kong, 1 December 2009, lot 1921.
Speckles of prunus flowers add to my leisurely mood;
A smattering of bird songs relieves my laboured heart.
The seals are:
Yuci yujin jicui: Imperial gift; Deep Gold and Dense Green
Tang Ying zhiyin: Seal of Tang Ying
Jun Gong (a sobriquet of Tang Ying)
The supervisor of the Imperial kilns at Jingdezhen during the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, Tang Ying (1683-1756), was not only one of the most efficient and innovative supervisors in the history of Chinese porcelain production, but also an accomplished calligrapher and poet. This very rare pair of panels is a fine example combining his three favourite subjects: porcelain, calligraphy and poetry. They show the consummate skills of the Jingdezhen potters to convey calligraphic brush strokes in clay. The characters are so masterfully rendered that on first glance they look as if indeed written by a brush. The fluidity of the strokes, the composition of the characters and the way the dry brush drags across the surface of the paper are all faithfully replicated in porcelain.
Excavations from the Imperial kiln sites at Zhushan in Jingdezhen have yielded similar porcelain shards of characters, as well as an unglazed seal with the mark 'Jun Gong' (Tang Ying's sobriquet) which is identical to the seal found on the current panels. The phrase Yuci Yujin Jicui could be a poetic title (usually adopted by scholars) given to Tang Ying by either the Yongzheng or Qianlong Emperor. Although there are no published records in establishing whether the title was an imperial gift to Tang Ying, similar calligraphic titles were given by Emperor Kangxi to Tang Ying's predecessor at the Imperial kilns, Lang Tingji (1663-1715). Among these include: Buze xijiang, 'Wide Benevolence to the West River'; Yuci Chunyi Tang, 'Imperial Gift (for) the Hall of Pure Unity'; Qing Shen, 'Uncorrupt and Vigilant'. Lang Tingji had the Yuci Chunyi Tang marks inscribed onto porcelain, an example of which is a blue-glazed bowl in the Percival David Foundation illustrated by Ming Wilson in Rare Marks of Chinese Porcelains, London, 1998, no. 35, pp. 90-91.
The only other known pair of porcelain-inlaid lacquer panels with Tang Ying's calligraphy appears to be in the collection of Eisei Bunko Museum, Tokyo, illustrated in Chugoku Bijutsu Shiho ten, Tokyo, 1981, no. 59 (fig. 1). The writing style of the current panels is undoubtedly that of Tang Ying's, and closely compares to the calligraphy also written by him on a water pot now in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated by Geng Baochang in Qingdai Yuyao Ciqi, Vol. I-b, Beijing, 2005, p. 9 (fig. 2). Note the characters 'hua' and ' dian' especially are written in exactly the same way on the panels and the water pot. Compare also to a small cup with Tang Ying's calligraphy sold in at Christie's Hong Kong, 1 December 2009, lot 1921.