A FINE AND RARE GLAZED SOFT-PASTE VASE

細節

A FINE AND RARE GLAZED SOFT-PASTE VASE
IMPRESSED QIANLONG SEAL MARK AND OF THE PERIOD

The vase is thinly potted with gracefully curving sides rising from a spreading foot to sharp shoulders and a slender neck, flaring at the mouth before sharply inverting, the lower body is impressed and incised with bands of key-fret, pendent archaistic leaves and upright lappets, with taotie masks and archaistic scroll motifs above the angled shoulder and a double band of circles and upright lappets around the neck, the flattened mouth incised with detached cloud scrolls, entirely covered in a transparent glaze suffused with crackles, the unglazed foot revealing the smooth white body
8 in. (20.4 cm.) high, box

來源

Chait Galleries, New York

展覽

Christie's London, An Exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, 2-14 June 1993, Catalogue no. 44.

拍品專文

The qualities of the present vase - its thinness and light weight, the slight ivory tinge of the crackled glaze and the crisply moulded decoration - are all characteristic of 'soft-paste' porcelain, a technique developed in the 18th Century for making white porcelain. The body was particularly fine textured and therefore ideal for very crisp moulded and incised designs, as seen on this vase. The glaze on these soft-paste porcelains usually has a finely crackled appearance.

'Soft paste' involves the addition of a powdered white clay to the porcelain body, which is called hua shi (slippery stone), and the resulting lightweight ware with delicately moulded and incised designs, was actually more expensive to produce than a standard kaolin body, as Pere d'Entrecolles observed in his second letter of 1722. For a full discussion, see R. Kerr, Chinese Ceramics: Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644-1911, 1986, pp. 52-53, where she also illustrates a Qianlong 'soft paste' vase in the Victoria and Albert Museum, fig. 29.

The precise and crisply moulded decorative motifs on this vase are clearly influenced by an earlier bronze vessel, created to satisfy the Emperor Qianlong's keen interest in archaism. An identical vase is illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics from the Koger Collection, 1985, no. 140. For a Yongzheng-marked vase of identical shape but with slightly differing decoration, see the example illustrated by Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Vol. 2, 1999, pl. 307 (A421). Compare also the vase from the Percival David Foundation, no. 445, included in the O. C. S. exhibition, The Ceramic Art of China, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1971, Catalogue pl. 240.
(US$35,000-45,000)