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Lot Essay
Wanli vases of similar shape, with this distinctive garlic-from mouth molded as rows of overlapping lotus petals, but decorated in the wucai palette with formalized lotus scroll, include the example from the Idemitsu Museum illustrated in The Pursuit of the Dragon, Seattle Art Museum, 1988, no. 72; the example illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. I, Tokyo, 1976, p. 304, no. 909; and the vase from the Benjamin F. Edwards III Collection, sold at Christie’s New York, 20 January 2004, lot 27.
The rich iron-red ground of this vase is also very unusual, forming a unifying background for the somewhat dense underglaze blue decoration, and may have been inspired by the solid turquoise ground of the earlier cloisonné enamel vases.
The rich iron-red ground of this vase is also very unusual, forming a unifying background for the somewhat dense underglaze blue decoration, and may have been inspired by the solid turquoise ground of the earlier cloisonné enamel vases.