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Lot Essay
The natural habitat of cockatoos is not China, but rather in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australasia. From the 3rd century AD onwards however, exotic parakeets, lories, and cockatoos were sent from Indonesia and Indochina as gifts to the Chinese court, and were also imported for sale to members of the elite. In fact, a number of gifts of multi-coloured and white parrots are recorded during the Tang dynasty. Thereafter such birds became popular amongst wealthy Chinese who kept them in their homes or gardens.
The fine workmanship of the current lot is evident from the treatment of the individual feathers which have been detailed by a narrow v-shaped cloison within each one. This would have been a very labour-intensive process. The same technique can also be seen on a pair of blue doves in the Uldry Collection (illustrated by Brinker and Lutz, Op. Cit., no.324), and on the scales of a Qianlong cloisonné mythical beast in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - Metal-bodied Enamel Ware, Hong Kong, 2002, p.123, no.119.
A very similar bird to the current lot was sold at Christie's Paris, 13 June 2007, lot 38 from the Juan Jose Amezaga collection. That bird was dated to the Qianlong period and was set within a cloisonné enamel birdcage, which provides an interesting insight as to how pieces similar to current lot could have been displayed.
The fine workmanship of the current lot is evident from the treatment of the individual feathers which have been detailed by a narrow v-shaped cloison within each one. This would have been a very labour-intensive process. The same technique can also be seen on a pair of blue doves in the Uldry Collection (illustrated by Brinker and Lutz, Op. Cit., no.324), and on the scales of a Qianlong cloisonné mythical beast in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - Metal-bodied Enamel Ware, Hong Kong, 2002, p.123, no.119.
A very similar bird to the current lot was sold at Christie's Paris, 13 June 2007, lot 38 from the Juan Jose Amezaga collection. That bird was dated to the Qianlong period and was set within a cloisonné enamel birdcage, which provides an interesting insight as to how pieces similar to current lot could have been displayed.