Lot 57
57
A VERY RARE LARGE BLUE AND WHITE MOONFLASK
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VA… Read more VARIOUS PROPERTIES
A VERY RARE LARGE BLUE AND WHITE MOONFLASK

UNDERGLAZE-BLUE QIANLONG SIX-CHARACTER SEAL MARK (PARTIALLY EFFACED) AND POSSIBLY OF THE PERIOD

Details
A VERY RARE LARGE BLUE AND WHITE MOONFLASK
UNDERGLAZE-BLUE QIANLONG SIX-CHARACTER SEAL MARK (PARTIALLY EFFACED) AND POSSIBLY OF THE PERIOD
The circular body of oval section raised on a splayed base and surmounted by a waisted neck flanked by bat handles with lingzhi fungus issuing from their mouths, each side finely painted in varying shades of bright cobalt blue with a farmer cultivating a field with a buffalo below paulownia trees, the short sides painted with scrolling peonies, and stylised shou characters suspending musical stones, the base and the rim with a band of ruyi heads, glaze crack around half of base
23½ in. (59.7 cm.) high
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

A slightly smaller example from the E. T. Chow Collection was sold in Hong Kong, 3rd-4th May 1994, lot 172

It appears that, apart from the Chow example, no other blue and white vases of this rare design with bat handles has been published; however, two related doucai vases are recorded and illustrated: one, with dragon handles and unmarked in the Tianjin Museum, illustrated by Liu Liang Yu, A Survey of Chinese Ceramics, vol.5, p. 186 top, and in Porcelains from the Tianjin Municipal Museum, pl. 176; the other, which has a Qianlong mark and with underglaze-blue decoration apparently intended for doucai enamels but unfinished, is in the Roemer Museum and illustrated by Wiesner in the Ohlmer Collection Catalogue, pl. 57.

The scenes on the flask are derived from the woodblock prints in Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu, 'Imperial Illustrations of Tilling and Weaving'. (See catalogue p.4 for a reproduction of 'harrowing'.) These illustrations were designed by Jiao Bingzhen to acompany a series of poems composed by the Kangxi Emperor on tilling and weaving, and published around 1697.

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