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Lot Essay
Previously sold in these Rooms, 28 April 1996, lot 684.
The pair to the present cup (fig. 1) was included in the joint exhibition from the collections of the Percival David Foundation and C.P. Lin, Elegant Forms and Harmonious Decoration, illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 61, fig. 56, PDF no. A777.
The Devanagari script is a Nepalese variant of Sanskrit, although in the present example the characters appear to have been used as decoration. During the Chenghua Emperor's reign, over 780 Tibetan monks enjoyed the privilege of presence at Court and palace circles owing to the Emperor's belief in Tibetan Lamaism. His sympathy for this branch of Buddhism was naturally expressed in the porcelain that he ordered. As a result, a number of other Chenghua period vessels bear Tibetan inscriptions, most frequently in underglaze-blue, such as those included in the Tsui Museum of Art special exhibition, A Legacy of Chenghua, 1993, illustrated in the Catalogue, nos. C62-C65, C82.
For a doucai small bowl with the same distinctive shape as the present lot and also painted and enamelled with emphatically Buddhist iconography, cf. op. cit., no. C94. A similar example to the present lot with the Chenghua mark obscured by a later-added Longqing six-character mark also from the Percival David Foundation, section 5, A 718, was sold at Sotheby's London, 15 October 1968, as the preceding lot to the present cup. A small bowl of this type but with a Zhengde mark and of the period, from the British Museum is illustrated by Soame Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain, pl. 70c ii. A cup with comparable decoration from the National Palace Museum, Taibei, is illustrated in Enamelled Ware of the Ming Dynasty, vol. I, pl. 23.
This rather unusual shallow shape is discussed by Geng Baocheng in Mingqing Ciqi Jianding, Forbidden City Publishing House, 1993, pp. 91-92; where a line drawing of the cup is illustrated ibid., no. 162.
The pair to the present cup (fig. 1) was included in the joint exhibition from the collections of the Percival David Foundation and C.P. Lin, Elegant Forms and Harmonious Decoration, illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 61, fig. 56, PDF no. A777.
The Devanagari script is a Nepalese variant of Sanskrit, although in the present example the characters appear to have been used as decoration. During the Chenghua Emperor's reign, over 780 Tibetan monks enjoyed the privilege of presence at Court and palace circles owing to the Emperor's belief in Tibetan Lamaism. His sympathy for this branch of Buddhism was naturally expressed in the porcelain that he ordered. As a result, a number of other Chenghua period vessels bear Tibetan inscriptions, most frequently in underglaze-blue, such as those included in the Tsui Museum of Art special exhibition, A Legacy of Chenghua, 1993, illustrated in the Catalogue, nos. C62-C65, C82.
For a doucai small bowl with the same distinctive shape as the present lot and also painted and enamelled with emphatically Buddhist iconography, cf. op. cit., no. C94. A similar example to the present lot with the Chenghua mark obscured by a later-added Longqing six-character mark also from the Percival David Foundation, section 5, A 718, was sold at Sotheby's London, 15 October 1968, as the preceding lot to the present cup. A small bowl of this type but with a Zhengde mark and of the period, from the British Museum is illustrated by Soame Jenyns, Ming Pottery and Porcelain, pl. 70c ii. A cup with comparable decoration from the National Palace Museum, Taibei, is illustrated in Enamelled Ware of the Ming Dynasty, vol. I, pl. 23.
This rather unusual shallow shape is discussed by Geng Baocheng in Mingqing Ciqi Jianding, Forbidden City Publishing House, 1993, pp. 91-92; where a line drawing of the cup is illustrated ibid., no. 162.