Lot Essay
It is highly unusual to find Qing dynasty vessels imitating an early decorative technique known as fahua or 'bounded pattern', that closely relates to cloisonne enamel. This method involves the use of bright enamel colours separated within raised trails of white slip that forms the patterned-surface. Fahua wares, traditionally enamelled with brilliant colours of deep blue, turquoise, purple, and green, were produced between the late Yuan to early Ming dynasties.
The blue and turquoise hues of these enamels are particularly distinctive in that they owe their glaze colours to a complex combination of copper-alkaline elements, which required a lower firing temperature and the success of these colours was difficult to control. This present jar was probably produced as a result of experimentations at Jingdezhen and the technical complexity in its production explains their limited production.
Although the appearance of the fahua colours on the present vase are in keeping with early style, the pink enamels and the use of the shading to depict lotus petals is typically Qing in flavour; undoubtedly this was fashioned to the specific taste of the period, comparable to the designs on famille rose bowls of the Qianlong period.
Cf. two examples with the same 'lotus pond' design both bearing Qianlong marks; the first, a slightly larger guan (39 cm. high), illustrated by S. Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, plate CII; and a small jar (17.5 cm. high) from the Baur Collection, illustrated by J. Ayers, Catalogue, vol. 11, A634, no. 241. Compare with two other Qianlong examples, both baluster vases and enamelled with a similiar theme on a light-turquoise ground: the first from the collections of the J. T. Tai Foundation and Mary Porter Walsh, sold in New York, 29 November 1994, lot 375; and the other in the Chang Foundation, illustrated by J. Spencer, Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing, no. 166.
(US$50,000-77,000)
The blue and turquoise hues of these enamels are particularly distinctive in that they owe their glaze colours to a complex combination of copper-alkaline elements, which required a lower firing temperature and the success of these colours was difficult to control. This present jar was probably produced as a result of experimentations at Jingdezhen and the technical complexity in its production explains their limited production.
Although the appearance of the fahua colours on the present vase are in keeping with early style, the pink enamels and the use of the shading to depict lotus petals is typically Qing in flavour; undoubtedly this was fashioned to the specific taste of the period, comparable to the designs on famille rose bowls of the Qianlong period.
Cf. two examples with the same 'lotus pond' design both bearing Qianlong marks; the first, a slightly larger guan (39 cm. high), illustrated by S. Jenyns, Later Chinese Porcelain, plate CII; and a small jar (17.5 cm. high) from the Baur Collection, illustrated by J. Ayers, Catalogue, vol. 11, A634, no. 241. Compare with two other Qianlong examples, both baluster vases and enamelled with a similiar theme on a light-turquoise ground: the first from the collections of the J. T. Tai Foundation and Mary Porter Walsh, sold in New York, 29 November 1994, lot 375; and the other in the Chang Foundation, illustrated by J. Spencer, Selected Chinese Ceramics from Han to Qing, no. 166.
(US$50,000-77,000)