A BLUE AND WHITE TAPERING RECTANGULAR VASE

Details

A BLUE AND WHITE TAPERING RECTANGULAR VASE
JIAJING SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE, KANGXI

The tall, slab-constructed vase with a flat foot and recessed base, finely painted in shades of underglaze blue on two faces with scenes from 'Odes to the Red Cliff' by the Song poet Su Dongpo, depicting landscape scenes of figures in boats and standing on cliffs, alternating with long vertical lines of text from the poem written in kaishu on the other two faces, each side enclosed by a shaped double-line border, the trumpet neck with delicately drawn canes of bamboo growing from rockwork (minor frit, glaze chip)
20½in. (52cm.) high

Lot Essay

A similarly decorated vase with a Kangxi mark, from the Michael Butler Collection, was included in the exhibition, Chinese Porcelain, The Transitional Period, 1620-1683, Princessehof Museum, January 1986, and illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 94, no. 133, where the author notes that a comparable example with a Jiajing mark is also in the Butler Collection. Another example with a Kangxi mark was included in the Exhibition of Qing Mark and Period Blue and White, S Marchant and Son, London, June 11-June 22, 1984, Catalogue, no. 1.

For a discussion of the imagery on this vase see Julia Curtis, Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century, China Institute Gallery, New York, 1995, Catalogue, p. 84, no. 26, where a similar vase is illustrated