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A Collector of Instinctive Good Taste Rosemary Scott, International Academic Director, Asian Art This season we are delighted to offer a select group of 24 Chinese ceramics from the collection of the British businessman and connoisseur Raymond F. A. Riesco (1877-1964) (fig. 1). Raymond Riesco's father was from South America, while his mother was Scottish. Born in England, the eldest of four children, Raymond Riesco was christened Ramon Francesco Alfredo Riesco, but later, encouraged by his wife, he anglicised his given names to Raymond Francis Alfred, keeping only his surname in its original form. However, to his many friends he was 'Jimmy' Riesco. His early childhood was spent in South Norwood, in the south London borough of Croydon, although his South American father disliked the English climate and frequently worked abroad. At the age of fifteen Raymond Riesco began work in a small insurance office. He proved to be extremely able, and after a successful career in this small company, his employer introduced him to the much larger firm of Price Forbes in the City of London, suggesting that Riesco might run the firm. Eventually he did indeed run the firm with Mr. Forbes, until he retired. On 14 July 1914 Raymond Riesco married Ada Mary Hovenden (1886-1968), with whom he had three children - two daughters and a son. In 1925 Riesco bought 'Heathfield' (fig. 2) near Croydon. Both the house and grounds had been somewhat neglected but Riesco expended considerable funds and effort in restoring them, creating gardens that were greatly admired by visitors. There were terraces, a formal garden, a rock garden, a heather garden, and a rose garden, but one of Riesco's greatest inspirations was to plant many mature trees, creating woods, as well as having rhododendrons and azaleas, whose flowers provided banks of brilliant colour in spring, while the large Chinese lilac on the lawn produced wonderfully fragrant pale mauve blossoms. The stables not only housed the Riesco children's ponies, but were used by a family friend, Peter Thrale, for his racehorses. Riesco and his wife enjoyed entertaining and welcomed visitors from all over the world, including, as his daughter Jean has recorded, a Mr. Faberg?, son of the famous Russian court jeweller (Jean Thorpe, "Heathfield" Remembered 1925-65, 1984). During the Second World War about 20 members of staff from Riesco's London office also moved into 'Heathfield' to escape the London bombings, and, although a flying bomb did hit the farm, no one was hurt. After Riesco retired in 1954 he took over the management of the farm, which was part of the estate, and 'ran it as a model farm'. Riesco had many interests outside the insurance business. He and his wife enjoyed travelling - particularly to the United States, Canada and South Africa. His wife had a sister in Johannesburg, South Africa. They particularly enjoyed travelling by sea in the age of the grand ocean liners, and they were able to make voyages on Cunard's Queen Mary, Aquatania, and Mauretania, and Norddeutscher Lloyd's Bremen - sending back post cards and other mementos, which were put in albums by the family. Riesco was an acknowledged authority on philately, and also had a collection of watercolours and etchings. His collection of stamps was sold before the Second World War, but after 1935 he gave serious attention to the collection of Chinese ceramics. From 1951 to 1961 he served on the Council of the Oriental Ceramic Society, and he loaned pieces from his collection to various of the exhibitions held by the Society. Indeed he loaned three of the pieces in the current sale to the Society's 1946 exhibition of Ming Blue-and- White Porcelain (Lots 3107, 3117 and 3119) - three further pieces belonging to Riesco were also included in this exhibition. Raymond Riesco was on the Exhibition Committee of the OCS Loan Exhibition of Chinese Blue and White Porcelain 14th to 19th Centuries, held in London in 1953-4, loaning 46 pieces from his own collection, including eight of the undeglaze blue decorated porcelains in the current sale (Lots 3105, 3107, 3108, 3111, 3113, 3116, 3117, and 3119). Riesco was also on the Exhibition Committee of the 1957 OCS Loan Exhibition of the Arts of the Ming, in which twelve of his own pieces were displayed, including six of the porcelains in the current sale (Lots 3114, 3117, 3118, 3119, 3121, and 3122). This was a very prestigious exhibition and his pieces were shown alongside those belonging to other great collectors such as H.M. the King of Sweden, Sir Percival and Lady David, and Mr. and Mrs. R.H.R. Palmer. After the Riesco collection was acquired by the London Borough of Croydon, four of the items in the current sale were loaned to the Oriental Ceramic Society's major 1971 exhibition The Ceramic Art of China (Lots 3109, 3114, 3117, and 3121). Raymond Riesco was also a generous benefactor to the OCS, and initiated the setting up of the Society's endowment fund. He also bequeathed a selection of Ming dynasty ceramics to the British Museum (see J. Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p. 594). The majority of the remaining pieces from Riesco's Chinese ceramic collection were acquired by the London Borough of Croydon when the Council purchased Mr Riesco's home, Heathfield House, and surrounding land in Addington, south London, following his death in 1964. Riesco appears to have made some of his first purchases of Chinese ceramics from the firm of Bluett & Sons in London at the end of the First World War, but it was not until after the International Exhibition of Chinese Art held in London in 1935 that he was inspired to form a significant collection. The archives of Bluett's show that Riesco purchased more than 500 pieces from the company, and his last purchase from them was in 1961, only three years before his death (Dominic Jellinek, 'Bluett Essay (Part 2), CARP). His daughter Jean Thorpe (n?e Riesco) recalls that although his collection of Chinese ceramics was not then as extensive as it would later become, some of the pieces were buried in the garden in packing cases during the Second World War to keep them safe (Jean Thorpe, "Heathfield" Remembered 1925-65, 1984). Riesco's daughter Jean has also recalled that one of the first items of Chinese ceramics which her father bought was a Tang dynasty horse. When it arrived at their home, the children of the family were young enough to be disappointed that the horse had no tail. Raymond Riesco therefore went out into the paddock, cut some of the hair from the tail of their little Welsh pony 'Taffy' and attached these to the Tang horse. Today the Tang horse still has its 'real' tail, and is on display in the Riesco Gallery at Croydon Clocktower with other items from the Riesco collection (fig. 3). From 1935 Riesco set about assembling a fine collection of Chinese ceramics, concentrating on the porcelains of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, but including pieces from the earlier periods (fig. 4 and fig. 5). He was described by one of his contemporaries as having instinctive good taste in his selection of Chinese ceramics. Each of Riesco's purchases was meticulously recorded, in his own hand, in one of the three volumes which form an inventory of his collection. This hand-written inventory includes more than 740 entries - some of them pairs or sets - while the third volume records, in an appendix, a small number of Japanese ceramics. The scope of the collection, which ranges from the cold-painted earthenwares of the Neolithic period to the fine porcelains of the Qing dynasty, was described by Edgar Bluett in a series of three articles for the Antique Collector published in June, August and October 1951. These articles were later published in book form, entitled The Riesco Collection of Old Chinese Pottery and Porcelain, with additional illustrations. Although he evidently wished to construct a collection which would exemplify the historical development of Chinese ceramics, it is clear that Raymond Riesco had a personal preference for fine wares of the Song dynasty, and, most especially, porcelains of the Ming dynasty, as well as those from the reign periods of the three great Qing emperors - Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. While the ceramics in the current sale are predominantly porcelains from the Ming dynasty, smaller number of exceptional early wares are included. Three of these had been in important collections even before they were purchased by Riesco. The exquisite Song dynasty Ding ware dish with carved daylily decoration (Lot 3101) was in the collection of Alfred Schoenlicht - resident of New York and the Hague, whose fine collection was sold in London after his death in 1955; the impressive Jin-Yuan dynasty splashed Jun ware bowl (Lot 3103) was in the famous collection of William Cleverley Alexander (1840-1916) - a wealthy English banker with an extensive collection of art; and the rare lobed Guan ware bowl (Lot 3104) was in the collection of Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968), later Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, whose remaining collection is now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. A large proportion of the Ming and Qing porcelains in the current sale also had illustrious histories before entering the Riesco collection. The vibrantly painted Yongle bowl (Lot 3106) and the rare Chenghua 'boys' bowl (Lot 3113), were both formerly in the collection of Archibald Dooley Brankston (1909-41), who was born in China, was involved in the preparations for the 1935 International Exhibition of Chinese Art, and succeeded Robert L. Hobson as Assistant Keeper in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. He was also the author of Early Ming Wares of Chingtechen, published in 1938, and the very rare lianzi bowl (Lot 3109) had also belonged to him, and was illustrated in his Early Ming Wares of Chingtechen, as plate 5a. The beautiful and rare Xuande (1426-35) double gourd-shaped vase (Lot 3111), was previously in the collection of the French Ambassador to Peking and that of John Frederick Woodthorpe (1897-1966), a Master of the Supreme Court, Chancery Division, who was also an active member of the Oriental Ceramic Society. The large finely-painted blue and white dish (Lot 3105) had belonged to the revered collector and scholar Sir Percival David (1892-1964), who was generally acknowledged to have the finest private collection of Chinese ceramics outside China. The unusually large Xuande 'sugar loaf base' or CY mantou xin bowl (Lot 3107) was formerly in the collection of Major Lindsay Fitzgerald Hay (1891-1946) - an officer in the Black Watch who was known for his exceptional height (6 feet 11 inches) and his collections of classic cars and Ming porcelain, while the rare Chenghua dish with lotus scrolls bearing the Eight Buddhist Emblems (Lot 3112) had been with Wu Lai-Hsi, a well-known dealer in Beijing in the 1930s. The striking Hongzhi 'green dragon' dish (Lot 3115) had been in the collection of George Eumorfopolous (1863-1939), a Greek tycoon, who was the first president of the Oriental Ceramic Society (1921-39), and whose Chinese ceramic collection was published in six folio volumes, catalogued by Robert L. Hobson (1872-1941). The fine Hongzhi dish with underglaze blue fruit and flowers against a yellow enamelled ground (Lot 3114), which Riesco photographed in his garden to get the full effect of the colours in natural light (fig. 6), had come from the collection of Francis Howard Paget (d. 1945), who was one of the lenders to the 1935 exhibition and bequeathed a number of rare Ming porcelains to the British Museum, while the Jiajing 'phoenix' dish in the same palette (Lot 3118) had been in the collection of Mrs. Brenda Z. Seligman (d. 1965), widow of Professor Charles G. Seligman (1873-1940) - they too were major lenders to the 1935 exhibition, and the pieces they acquired together and those acquired by Mrs. Seligman after her husband's death were published in two volumes by John Ayers in 1964. The extremely rare Qing dynasty Kangxi mallet vase with underglaze copper red decoration (Lot 3123) is one of a pair that had been in the collection of Field Marshall Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum (1850-1916), much decorated military officer whose image was used on recruiting posters during the First World War, encouraging young men to enlist in the armed forces. The group of vessels in the current sale include many exceptional pieces, but is particularly rich in blue and white porcelains from a period which many connoisseurs regard as the Golden Age of Chinese blue and white - the 15th century. Among the highlights is a rare and elegant Xuande (1426-35) double gourd-shaped vase, which bears a six-character Xuande reign mark written horizontally around the upper bulb (Lot 3111). This vase reflects an especially successful melding of Chinese and Near Eastern inspiration, which was appreciated by wealthy patrons in countries to the west of China, and by the Chinese court of the early 15th century, as evidenced by the discovery of a fragment of a similar flask in the ruins of the early Ming dynasty imperial palace at Nanjing (illustrated in A Legacy of the Ming, Hong Kong, 1996, p. 48, no. 52). Another highlight from the Xuande reign period is the beautiful dish with a lotus scroll in the central roundel and exquisitely painted naturalistic fruiting sprays on the interior walls (Lot 3108). The delicate variegated lotus scroll on the interior of this dish is exceedingly rare, however an identical scroll can be seen on the interior of a slightly smaller, straight-rimmed, dish in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei (illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hs?an-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, pp. 426-7, no. 186). A third important piece in this group is a bowl from the reign period traditionally lauded, alongside the Xuande reign, as producing the finest porcelains of the 15th century. This is the reign of the Chenghua Emperor (1465-87), and a particularly delightful bowl in the current sale is decorated with a scene of boy children playing in a garden (Lot 3113). As early as the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907) images of young boys at play was a popular secular theme on the Chinese decorative arts, being viewed as an auspicious symbol associated with the wish for sons and grandsons, and thus the continuation of the family line as well as the prosperity of the family. This decorative motif appears on rare, blue and white porcelain bowls of the Yongle reign (1403-24), such as that in the Tianminlou collection (Illustrated in Chinese Porcelain - The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, p. 43, no. 15), but in the Chenghua reign this decorative theme was particularly favoured by the Emperor, whose desire for an heir led to his commissioning items with auspicious wishes for sons and grandsons. The group of porcelains in this sale also includes outstanding items from the middle Ming period as well as very rare pieces from the Qing dynasty Kangxi reign. It is a measure of the quality of Raymond Riesco's collection that, as well as appearing in exhibitions organised by the Oriental Ceramic Society, five of the pieces in the current sale were included in the prestigious Arte Cinese exhibition, Venezia, 1954 (Lots 3107, 3108, 3116, 3121, and 3122) and a number have been illustrated in seminal works on the subject of Chinese ceramics, such as Sir Harry Garner's Oriental Blue and White, London, 1954 (Lots 3109. 3111, and 3116). The Riesco collection was assembled with great care by a man who seems to have had an instinct for exceptional Chinese ceramics.

A DING CARVED 'DAYLILY' HEXAFOIL BOWL

NORTHERN SONG/JIN DYNASTY, 12TH-13TH CENTURY

Details

A DING CARVED 'DAYLILY' HEXAFOIL BOWL
NORTHERN SONG/JIN DYNASTY, 12TH-13TH CENTURY
The shallow bowl is delicately potted with angled flaring sides rising from the ring foot to the hexafoil rim, and fluidly carved on the interior with daylily blossoms. It is covered overall with a glaze of even ivory-white tone, and bound with a thin metal band on the mouth rim.
7 7/8 in. (19.9 cm.) diam.

Provenance

Alfred Shoenlicht (d. 1955)
Sold at Sotheby's London, 13 December 1955, lot 56
Bluett & Sons, London, 1955
Raymond F.A. Riesco Collection, no. 103p

Literature

London Borough of Croydon, Riesco Collection of Chinese Ceramics Handlist, Croydon, 1987, p. 6, no. 42

Exhibited

On loan at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, prior to 1955

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Lot Essay

The present bowl is a classic example of the finest Ding wares of the 12th-13th century. The form, almost certainly derived from metalwork, is one that provided a significant test for its potter particularly when combined with carved decorations. In order to achieve the sharp junction between base and sides, the thrown dish had to be placed over a wooden form and pressed down to achieve the sharp junction between base and sides. This process was rendered more difficult because the decoration had already been carved into the interior of the dish and risked being squashed in the forming process. It is a measure of the potter's skill that the decoration remains crisp and distinct, and the current bowl stands as a testimony to such artistry, demonstrating a synergy of elegant form and fluid design.

Daylily blossoms was a popular motif on Ding wares from mid-Northern Song to Jin periods, and can be found on other open forms such as shallow dishes, conical bowls and deep bowls. Compare to a similar shallow bowl carved with the same motif, but bearing slight variation in composition, in the Liaoning Provincial Museum, and illustrated in Zhongguo taoci quanji - 9 - Dingyao, Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1981, no. 70. For the same carved motif on other forms, compare to three shallow dishes in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ting Ware White Porcelain, Taipei, 1987, nos. 111-113; a conical bowl included in the catalogue of The Classic Age of Chinese Ceramics: An Exhibition of Song Treasures from the Linyushanren Collection, Hong Kong, 2012, no. 4; and two deep bowls in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (I), The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 1996, nos. 47 and 55. Other motifs carved on bowls of this form include ducks in lotus pond, such as an example illustrated by G. Hasebe in Sekai Toji Zenshu - 12 - Song, Tokyo, 1977, pl. 143, and a peony spray, as shown on a bowl sold at Christie's New York, 22 March 2013, lot 1441.

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