A MASSIVE FIVE-PIECE BLUE AND WHITE GARNITURE

KANGXI PERIOD

Details

A MASSIVE FIVE-PIECE BLUE AND WHITE GARNITURE
Kangxi period
Each piece of octagonal outline and painted in deep tones of cobalt blue with large vertical panels of flowering plants, including hydrangea, prunus, roses and magnolia, with small birds on some of the knarled branches and butterflies or insects hovering alongside, all edged in flowering vine borders and beneath smaller panels of grasses and blossoming plants around the rim, the domed covers repeating the smaller panels and centered by large flowerbud knops
24in. (61cm.) high (5)

Sale room notice

Please note the estimate should read $50,000 to 70,000.

Lot Essay

Like so many forms in export porcelain, five-piece garnitures derive from a purely Chinese archetype. Chinese altar garnitures, made for use in both temples and homes (and metalwork as often as ceramic), were by long tradition comprised of a central incense burner flanked by a pair of pricket candlesticks and a pair of beaker vases. Western traders adopted this general scheme for a purely decorative, non-secular purpose. As A. du Boulay puts it (Christie's Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, p. 253), "The sets of five were the ideal number for the European chimneypiece or the large Dutch cupboard." A set of this grand scale was obviously intended for a very important house, where they may have stood on the floor of the hall or in front of the fireplace in summer as easily as on top of a sideboard or massive bookcase

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