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

The glaze on the present bowl is unusual for its soft, pinkish color and pronounced green mottling on the interior. The reduction-firing of the copper-red glaze was extremely difficult to control, often resulting in a mottled effect, which is more frequently seen on earlier Kangxi period porcelains. The soft mottling of the glaze on the current bowl, which recalls the famed peachbloom glaze of the Kangxi period, suggests it may have been produced early in the Yongzheng period. Three Kangxi mark-and-period copper-red-glazed bowls, which display similar greenish mottling on the interior, are illustrated in Shimmering Colours: Monochromes of the Yuan to Qing Periods, The Zhuyuetang Collection, Hong Kong, 2005, p. 101, no. 39. A Kangxi mark-and-period dish exhibiting a copper-red glaze similar to that of the current bowl, is illustrated ibid., p. 102, no. 40.

Most Yongzheng mark-and-period copper-red-glazed bowls have white interiors, and the current bowl is rare to be covered both inside
and out in copper-red glaze. A Yongzheng mark-and-period bowl covered overall in a copper-red glaze, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong,
24 November 1987, lot 129, and again at Christie’s New York, 21 September 2000, lot 394, was included in the Marchant exhibition
Recent Acquisitions 2010, London, 2010, pp. 62-3, no. 36. For a slightly larger (20.7 cm. diam.) early Ming prototype for the present bowl, covered inside and out with a copper-red glaze, see M. Medley, The World’s Great Collections: Oriental Ceramics, Vol. 6, The Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, Tokyo/New York/San Francisco, 1982, no. 27.