Lot Essay
Previously sold in our New York Rooms, 1 December 1994, lot 437.
The pair to this vase, also from the J. M. Hu Family Collection, was sold in New York, 4 June 1985, lot 20.
This elegant form is known as yaoling zun which literally translates as a 'vase in the shape of a handbell'. Its unusual shape originally derived from the classic paper-beater vases of the Song period.
Compare to three almost identical examples, the first illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in The Baur Collection, vol. 2, p. 23, no. 147; the second from the Sir Harry and Lady Garner collection, included in the exhibition of Blue-Decorated Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1949, illustrated in the Catalogue, Oriental Ceramic Society, 1954, no. 282; and another illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, pl. 1042.
Vases of this form in underglaze-blue also appear without the copper-red design; both variations are illustrated by S. G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1975,p. 221, figs. 212 and 213. Compare an underglaze-blue example illustrated in Chinese Porcelain: The S. C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1978, vol. II, p. 76, no. 49, where the author suggested that the form is reminiscent of the Lamaist white pagodas popular in Mongolia and Tibet.
(US$320,000-385,000)
The pair to this vase, also from the J. M. Hu Family Collection, was sold in New York, 4 June 1985, lot 20.
This elegant form is known as yaoling zun which literally translates as a 'vase in the shape of a handbell'. Its unusual shape originally derived from the classic paper-beater vases of the Song period.
Compare to three almost identical examples, the first illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in The Baur Collection, vol. 2, p. 23, no. 147; the second from the Sir Harry and Lady Garner collection, included in the exhibition of Blue-Decorated Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1949, illustrated in the Catalogue, Oriental Ceramic Society, 1954, no. 282; and another illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, pl. 1042.
Vases of this form in underglaze-blue also appear without the copper-red design; both variations are illustrated by S. G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1975,p. 221, figs. 212 and 213. Compare an underglaze-blue example illustrated in Chinese Porcelain: The S. C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1978, vol. II, p. 76, no. 49, where the author suggested that the form is reminiscent of the Lamaist white pagodas popular in Mongolia and Tibet.
(US$320,000-385,000)