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拍品专文
No other tiered box of this design appears to be published. The decoration on both the top of the cover and around the sides is extremely fine, with each blossom delicately shaded in two colours and the butterflies individually conceived to depict different species.
The motif of birds on branches has always been popular, many of such designs taken from Song dynasty paintings of the same theme and composition. Birds are often represented as harbingers of Spring, as they are seen to perch on branches with buds and newly opened blossoms. These designs are found on many Qing imperial porcelains, especially on those known as Guyuexuan pieces, where the poems inscribed alongside the painting usually refer to Eternal Spring.
The treatment of the birds on trees on the domed cover is very similar to that found on a Yongzheng-marked box in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, illustrated in Enamel Ware in the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties, Taiwan, 1999, pl. 102. A Beijing enamel miniature vase decorated in a comparable style, with four panels of pairs of birds, butterflies and bats, amidst different fruiting and flowering branches, was included in the Ashmolean Museum exhibition, Chinese Painted Enamels, Oxford, 1978, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 34 and on the back cover; and subsequently sold in these Rooms, 29 April 2001, lot 558. Cf. also an inkstone set within a Qianlong-marked enamel stand, where the treatment of the tiered sides and octagonal cover with geese in landscape is very similar to that on the present lot, sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 27 April 2003, lot 4.
The motif of birds on branches has always been popular, many of such designs taken from Song dynasty paintings of the same theme and composition. Birds are often represented as harbingers of Spring, as they are seen to perch on branches with buds and newly opened blossoms. These designs are found on many Qing imperial porcelains, especially on those known as Guyuexuan pieces, where the poems inscribed alongside the painting usually refer to Eternal Spring.
The treatment of the birds on trees on the domed cover is very similar to that found on a Yongzheng-marked box in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, illustrated in Enamel Ware in the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties, Taiwan, 1999, pl. 102. A Beijing enamel miniature vase decorated in a comparable style, with four panels of pairs of birds, butterflies and bats, amidst different fruiting and flowering branches, was included in the Ashmolean Museum exhibition, Chinese Painted Enamels, Oxford, 1978, illustrated in the Catalogue, no. 34 and on the back cover; and subsequently sold in these Rooms, 29 April 2001, lot 558. Cf. also an inkstone set within a Qianlong-marked enamel stand, where the treatment of the tiered sides and octagonal cover with geese in landscape is very similar to that on the present lot, sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 27 April 2003, lot 4.