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Lot Essay
This very rare moon flask is exquisitely decorated with a continuous prunus branch overhanging a stream. There appears to be only one similar moon flask known, in the Percival David Foundation collection, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World’s Great Collections, volume 7, The Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, Tokyo, 1976, no. 92. (Fig. 1) The Percival David example is of nearly identical size, and bears a similarly-rendered apocryphal Chenghua mark, but is decorated with a flowering peach branch.
The delicate enamels and design of this moon flask are reminiscent of Chenghua porcelains, and these factors, combined with the apocryaphal Chenghua mark, are all representative of the antiquarian interests of the Yongzheng Emperor, who was known to have passionately collected and studied material from earlier dynasties. In a discussion of the Percival David moon flask, Stacey Pierson notes that the design is taken from the luo hua liu shui (falling flowers on flowing water) motif found on Ming dynasty poetry and painting (see S. Pierson, Designs as Signs: Decoration and Chinese Ceramics, London, 2001, p. 51) further solidifying the connection between the present moon flask and Chenghua prototypes is an example of a Chenghua-marked doucai cup with the same luo hua liu shui motif excavated at Jingdezhen published by R. Scott, “Further Discoveries from the Imperial Kiln Site at Jingdezhen,” Orientations, vol. 23, no. 4, April 1992, p. 55, fig. 25. This cup is the only known Chenghua-period example decorated with this motif.
The delicate enamels and design of this moon flask are reminiscent of Chenghua porcelains, and these factors, combined with the apocryaphal Chenghua mark, are all representative of the antiquarian interests of the Yongzheng Emperor, who was known to have passionately collected and studied material from earlier dynasties. In a discussion of the Percival David moon flask, Stacey Pierson notes that the design is taken from the luo hua liu shui (falling flowers on flowing water) motif found on Ming dynasty poetry and painting (see S. Pierson, Designs as Signs: Decoration and Chinese Ceramics, London, 2001, p. 51) further solidifying the connection between the present moon flask and Chenghua prototypes is an example of a Chenghua-marked doucai cup with the same luo hua liu shui motif excavated at Jingdezhen published by R. Scott, “Further Discoveries from the Imperial Kiln Site at Jingdezhen,” Orientations, vol. 23, no. 4, April 1992, p. 55, fig. 25. This cup is the only known Chenghua-period example decorated with this motif.