A VERY RARE SMALL CELADON-GLAZED DOUBLE-BOTTLE VASE

Details

A VERY RARE SMALL CELADON-GLAZED DOUBLE-BOTTLE VASE
YONGZHENG SIX-CHARACTER MARK AND OF THE PERIOD

Formed from a pair of bottle vases, their spherical bodies joined just below the slender tapered necks and above the flared feet, covered in a soft bubble-suffused green glaze pooling in the joint and draining below the mouth rims, the unglazed feet revealing the smooth white body, the reign mark is inscribed in a line below one rim (tiny glaze chip restored)
4 in. (10.2 cm.) high, box

Provenance

Madame Maurice Solvay, Paris
Paul and Helen Bernat, sold Sotheby's Hong Kong, 15 November 1988, lot 65.

Exhibited

Christie's London, An Exhibition of Important Chinese Ceramics from the Robert Chang Collection, 2-14 June 1993, Catalogue, no. 64.

Lot Essay

The form of this vase is known as shuanglian ping or 'double lotus flask', and it is one of the Yongzheng shapes illustrated by Geng Baochang in Ming Qing Ciqi Jianding, Qingdai Bufen, p. 73, fig. 90 (15).

Other examples of this vase are known. One covered in a celadon glaze, but of slightly larger size and with the same arrangement of the reign mark, is included in the Illustrated Catalogue of Ch'ing Dynasty Porcelain, in the National Palace Museum, pl. 135; a lavender glazed example from the Grandidier Collection, now in the Musee Guimet, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 7, no. 168.

(US$45,000-60,000)

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