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Lot Essay
The vase is of extremely well-potted slender form with broad shoulders rising to a short neck with lipped rim, elegantly decorated in vibrant underglaze copper-red and soft tones of underglaze blue with nine dragons leaping dynamically amidst foaming crests and crashing waves, all beneath a classic border of lappets at the neck and a band of lingzhi fungus at the shoulder. The copper red is particularly well fired, being a bright tone of red, resembling crush raspberries.
The present vase is a deliberate derivation of the early-Ming prototypes, more specifically, it follows the designs on early Ming meiping. See a Xuande blue and white meiping with a lipped mouth and rounded shoulders, depicting a four-clawed dragon grasping lingzhi in mouth and leaping amidst the wave, was excavated in Zhushan and included in Xuande Imperial Porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen, Taipei, 1998, no. 8-1. For a Xuande prototype decorated with nine dragons among crashing waves, see a stem bowl in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, collection number: guci 016656 (fig. 1).
There is a matching record in the Qing court archive, which states that ‘on the 29th day of the 10th month of the Qianlong 3rd year (1738), Emperor Qianlong ordered for a copper-red-decorated dragon meiping be remade, as the copper red was unsatisfactory and required improved firing’. Later, on the 10th day of the 6th month of Qianlong 4th year (1739), a ‘Xuande-imitated blue and white and copper-red-decorated dragon meiping’ was presented to the Emperor.
Similarly decorated vessels from the Qianlong period can be found in important collections. A very similar Qianlong ‘nine dragon’ meiping of this size from the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Qing Porcelain of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Periods from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, p.327. One from the Qing Court Collection is included in the Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), Hong Kong, 2010, no. 205 (fig. 2); one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibited in Masters and Masterpieces: Chinese Art from the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, New York, 30 January 2021 – 5 June 2022, collection number: 1978.529 (fig. 3); and a blue and white one sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 April 2023, lot 3723.
The present vase is a deliberate derivation of the early-Ming prototypes, more specifically, it follows the designs on early Ming meiping. See a Xuande blue and white meiping with a lipped mouth and rounded shoulders, depicting a four-clawed dragon grasping lingzhi in mouth and leaping amidst the wave, was excavated in Zhushan and included in Xuande Imperial Porcelain excavated at Jingdezhen, Taipei, 1998, no. 8-1. For a Xuande prototype decorated with nine dragons among crashing waves, see a stem bowl in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, collection number: guci 016656 (fig. 1).
There is a matching record in the Qing court archive, which states that ‘on the 29th day of the 10th month of the Qianlong 3rd year (1738), Emperor Qianlong ordered for a copper-red-decorated dragon meiping be remade, as the copper red was unsatisfactory and required improved firing’. Later, on the 10th day of the 6th month of Qianlong 4th year (1739), a ‘Xuande-imitated blue and white and copper-red-decorated dragon meiping’ was presented to the Emperor.
Similarly decorated vessels from the Qianlong period can be found in important collections. A very similar Qianlong ‘nine dragon’ meiping of this size from the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Qing Porcelain of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Periods from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, p.327. One from the Qing Court Collection is included in the Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), Hong Kong, 2010, no. 205 (fig. 2); one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhibited in Masters and Masterpieces: Chinese Art from the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, New York, 30 January 2021 – 5 June 2022, collection number: 1978.529 (fig. 3); and a blue and white one sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 April 2023, lot 3723.