A RARE MOLDED AND COPPER-RED-DECORATED MEIPING

Details
A RARE MOLDED AND COPPER-RED-DECORATED MEIPING
YONGZHENG SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE WITHIN A DOUBLE CIRCLE AND OF THE PERIOD

Well potted and molded around the sides and shoulders with two, large, five-clawed, scaly dragons, their heads finely detailed with horns, moustache, beard and flame-like eyes, their bodies coiling in a whiplash motion behind them, with two smaller dragons molded below them on the lower portion of the body, all reserved in white on a ground of dense breaking waves painted in rich copper-red of brilliant crushed strawberry tone from the foot to the rim (crescent-shaped crack) 13 3/8in. (34cm.) high
Provenance
Stephen Junkunc, III

Lot Essay

Similar examples of this rare and brilliantly decorated meiping are in the Palace Museum, illustrated in Kangxi. Yongzheng. Qianlong, Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 1989; in the Havermeyer Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated by Cox, The Book of Pottery and Porcelain, vol. II, New York, 1949, pl. 164 (top right); and in the Hermitage Museum, included in the exhibition, Chinese Porcelains in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, 1977, illustrated by T. Arapova in the Catalogue, p. 129, no. 195

These Yongzheng vases are based on early Ming prototypes, such as the underglaze red meiping of Yongle date illustrated by Geng Baocheng, Ming Qing Ciqi Jianding, Hong Kong, 1993, p. 19 (bottom right). There are other Qing versions that more closely resemble the early fifteenth century prototypes, as opposed to the more refined shape and style of decoration of the present example and the ones in the Palace Museum, the Metropolitan Museum and the Hermitage. See the meiping in the Baur Collection, illustrated by Ayers in the Catalogue, vol. IV, Geneva, 1974, no. A526, which has a Xuande mark, but which has been dated circa 1720-30; and the Yongzheng example illustrated in Min Shin no Bijutsu, Osaka Municipal Museum of Fine Art, 1980, p. 38, no. 1-161