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Lot Essay
The slightly domed cover is finely painted with iron-red, green and yellow enamels, highlighting the underglaze-blue design to depict a writhing dragon confronting a long-tailed phoenix between a flaming pearl amidst composite floral scrolls, all within a single line border. The vertical sides of both box and cover are decorated with the same motifs, and the reign mark is within a double-line frame and bordered by ruyi-heads on the recessed base.
Decorated in the wucai technique, the present box was an imperial commission of the Wanli reign, featuring the imperial symbols of a five-clawed dragon and a flying phoenix to represent the Emperor and Empress. Beyond its extraordinarily rare, unusually large scale, the sheer weight of the porcelain would have made it extremely difficult to fire the box successfully, it also stands out for its refined painting and balanced composition. The painter masterfully utilised the white of the porcelain as base and had the addition of an almost black enamel to provide outlines and texture strokes to certain areas of the design, creating a pleasing visual contrast between the soft depth of underglaze cobalt blue and the vibrant overglaze enamels.
This palette was particularly favoured by the Jiajing, Longqing, and Wanli emperors, who commissioned a variety of porcelain items decorated in this technique.
The term wucai carries deep cultural and spiritual resonance. The number five represents core foundational concepts in Chinese philosophy and religion, including the Five Elements, Five Directions, the Five Transcendent Buddhas in Tantric Buddhism with each represented by red, green, white, blue, and yellow. While in Daoism, it aligns with the concept of divine correspondence through sacred geography and cosmology, such as the Five Sacred Peaks, the Five Planets, and the five-coloured bands of light above Wudang Mountain.
Only one other wucai cylindrical box of this impressive size appears to be recorded. This is the famous box in the Umezawa Kinenkan Museum, Tokyo, which has been officially designated an Important Art Object by the Japanese authorities. The Umezawa box, which has the same decorative theme of dragon and phoenix chasing a flaming pearl among floral scrolls, was one of the most prestigious pieces exhibited in 1995 in Imperial Overglaze-Enamelled Wares in the Late Ming Dynasty, at the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, exhibit no. 32. Like the current box, the Umezawa example has a glazed panel recessed into its unglazed base in which the six-character mark appears in underglaze-blue within a double rectangle bordered by eight ruyi heads. Such large cylindrical porcelain boxes are rare in any decorative scheme, and one of the very few with blue and white decoration is also in the Umezawa Kinenkan Museum. This blue and white box, which is illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, Tokyo, 1976, p. 322, no. 961, is decorated with five-clawed dragons chasing flaming pearls amongst a floral ground.
The theme of the imperial dragon and phoenix with flaming pearl can be seen on several wucai porcelains commissioned by the Wanli court. A closely related box and cover of octagonal form bearing the same style of mark, formerly in the Robert Chang Collection, was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 November 2006, lot 1315 (fig. 1). For a wucai dish decorated with two confronting dragons amidst floral scrolls, see the example in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 53, no. 49. Further compare to a similarly decorated garlic-mouth vase, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 November 2016, lot 3397.
Decorated in the wucai technique, the present box was an imperial commission of the Wanli reign, featuring the imperial symbols of a five-clawed dragon and a flying phoenix to represent the Emperor and Empress. Beyond its extraordinarily rare, unusually large scale, the sheer weight of the porcelain would have made it extremely difficult to fire the box successfully, it also stands out for its refined painting and balanced composition. The painter masterfully utilised the white of the porcelain as base and had the addition of an almost black enamel to provide outlines and texture strokes to certain areas of the design, creating a pleasing visual contrast between the soft depth of underglaze cobalt blue and the vibrant overglaze enamels.
This palette was particularly favoured by the Jiajing, Longqing, and Wanli emperors, who commissioned a variety of porcelain items decorated in this technique.
The term wucai carries deep cultural and spiritual resonance. The number five represents core foundational concepts in Chinese philosophy and religion, including the Five Elements, Five Directions, the Five Transcendent Buddhas in Tantric Buddhism with each represented by red, green, white, blue, and yellow. While in Daoism, it aligns with the concept of divine correspondence through sacred geography and cosmology, such as the Five Sacred Peaks, the Five Planets, and the five-coloured bands of light above Wudang Mountain.
Only one other wucai cylindrical box of this impressive size appears to be recorded. This is the famous box in the Umezawa Kinenkan Museum, Tokyo, which has been officially designated an Important Art Object by the Japanese authorities. The Umezawa box, which has the same decorative theme of dragon and phoenix chasing a flaming pearl among floral scrolls, was one of the most prestigious pieces exhibited in 1995 in Imperial Overglaze-Enamelled Wares in the Late Ming Dynasty, at the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, exhibit no. 32. Like the current box, the Umezawa example has a glazed panel recessed into its unglazed base in which the six-character mark appears in underglaze-blue within a double rectangle bordered by eight ruyi heads. Such large cylindrical porcelain boxes are rare in any decorative scheme, and one of the very few with blue and white decoration is also in the Umezawa Kinenkan Museum. This blue and white box, which is illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, Tokyo, 1976, p. 322, no. 961, is decorated with five-clawed dragons chasing flaming pearls amongst a floral ground.
The theme of the imperial dragon and phoenix with flaming pearl can be seen on several wucai porcelains commissioned by the Wanli court. A closely related box and cover of octagonal form bearing the same style of mark, formerly in the Robert Chang Collection, was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 November 2006, lot 1315 (fig. 1). For a wucai dish decorated with two confronting dragons amidst floral scrolls, see the example in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Porcelains in Polychrome and Contrasting Colours, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 53, no. 49. Further compare to a similarly decorated garlic-mouth vase, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 November 2016, lot 3397.