Lot Essay
Vases of this shape, including ours, usually depict landscapes and poetics verses from the Odes to the Red cliff. See an example in the Shanghai Museum is illustrated in Kangxi Porcelain Wares, Hong Kong, 1998, pp. 42 and 43, pl. 31 and another similar vase illustrated by Julia Curtis, Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1995, p. 84, no. 26. Three further similar examples from the famous Butler Family Collection, two of which with Kangxi marks, are illustrated by Sir Michael Butler, 'Chinese Porcelain at the Beginning of Qing', Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 1984-1985, London, 1986, pls. 38 - 40, and discussed pp. 33-36, where the author suggests they belong to a group of porcelain produced before the establishment of the Imperial kilns in Jingdezhen.