YONGZHENG SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE WITHIN A DOUBLE CIRCLE AND OF THE PERIOD (1723-1735)

It is unusual to find the design of five bats (wufu) in white slip reserved on a celadon ground bowl, as the bats are more usually in copper red. For a bowl of this latter type see the example illustrated by J. Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, vol. 2, Geneva, 1999, p. 79, no. 199. However, two bowls of the same size and shape as the Baur bowl decorated with bats in white slip are published: one in the Victoria and Albert Museum illustrated by W.B. Honey, The Ceramic Art of China, London, 1945, pl. 118 (top), and one in the Zhuyuetang Collection illustrated in Shimmering Colours: Monochromes of the Yuan to Qing Periods, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005, p. 154, no. 83. For two bowls of the same unusual shape and size of the present example, both with a celadon ground, one decorated with the more usual copper red bats and the other with the bats in the rarer white slip, see Splendour of the Qing Dynasty, 9 June - 2 August 1992, Hong Kong Museum of Art, p. 344, no. 211.