CHEN YINQIAN MARK, QIANLONG PERIOD (1736-1795)

The present teapot and cover is a rare example of robin’s egg glazed Yixing wares of the Qianlong period, and the only example of this kind bearing a mark by Chen Yinqian. Chen Yinqian, dates unknown, was a Yixing potter active during the mid-Qianlong period. A nearly identical unglazed Yixing teapot and cover of the same design is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, digital file number: K1B006545N000000000PAB (fig.1), which has accumulated a beautiful patina from years of use, possibly by the Qianlong Emperor himself. The mottled glaze covering the exterior of the present teapot and cover, is similarly found on another Yixing teapot signed Sun Wei dating to the Qianlong period in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Monochrome Porcelain, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 210, no. 189.

The present teapot and cover was in the collection of Wilfrid Fleisher (1897-1976), whose father Ben Fleisher moved from his native United States to Japan, and published the first English newspaper in Japan, The Japan Advertiser in 1908. Wilfrid grew up in Japan and was deeply interested in Chinese and Japanese works of art. He collected throughout the 1920s and 1930s, building a substantial collection comprising primarily of ceramics and jades. The Fleishers left Japan at the outbreak of the Second World and eventually settled down in Sweden. The collection had been handed down within the family since, part of which was auctioned in Sweden in 2021.