AN IMPORTANT EARLY MING BLUE AND WHITE STEMCUP

Details

AN IMPORTANT EARLY MING BLUE AND WHITE STEMCUP
ENCIRCLED XUANDE SIX-CHARACTER MARK AND OF THE PERIOD

The cup with rounded sides and a slightly everted rim, delicately painted with a scholar seated in a pavilion while two small boys play with crickets within a fenced garden flanked by trees and plants, the characteristic ribbed stem with a spreading foot further decorated with a continuous landscape scene, the interior with eight sanskrit characters around the central character om, all within double-line borders (glaze chip at rim infilled with associated fine hairline, foot slightly reduced)
3 in. (7.5 cm.) high, box

Literature

Krahl, Regina, 'The T.T. Tsui Museum Collection of Chinese Ceramics; Orientations, December 1989, p. 40, fig. 17.
The Tsui Museum of Art, 1991, pl. 66.
Splendour of Ancient Chinese Art, Selections from the Collections of T.T. Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art Worldwide, 1996, no. 53.

Lot Essay

A stemcup of this rare design from the C.P. Lin Collection was included in A Joint Exhibition from the Collections of the Percival David Foundation and C.P. Lin, 1992, and illustrated by R. E. Scott, Elegant Form and Harmonious Decoration: Four Dynasties of Jingdezhen Porcelain, no. 37, p. 47. This was formerly in the T.Y. Chao Collection, and was sold in Hong Kong, 19 May 1987, lot 238.

Other related stemcups but with a lady seated in a pavilion are also known. Cf. one illustrated in Sekai Toji Zenshu, Ming Dynasty, vol. 14, no. 182, p. 178; and another from the Collection of Jean-Pierre Dubosc was included in the Exhibition of Chinese Art, Venice 1954, Catalogue, no. 646, p. 176.

A further stemcup decorated with two ladies seated in a pavilion from the National Palace Museum, Taibei, is illustrated in Xuande, Ming Dynasty, no. 66.

(US$130,000-200,000)

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