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Lot Essay
The delicate glaze on the present washer is known in the west as 'clair-de-lune', and in Chinese as tianlan you (天藍釉), literally 'sky-blue glaze', named for its soft and ethereal hue reminiscent of the clear sky after rain. This subtle tone, prized for its elegance and simplicity, was a technical innovation of the Jingdezhen imperial kilns during the Kangxi period (1662–1722), achieved through high-temperature firing and careful glaze formulation.
Kangxi mark-and-period clair-de-lune-glazed vessels are exceedingly rare, and surviving examples tend to be refined scholar’s objects. The present vessel, of compressed globular form with a broad, inverted mouth, is known in Chinese as a tangluo xi, literally a gong-shaped washer, its low, rounded profile recalling the silhouette of a bronze musical instrument of gong. A comparable clair-de-lune-glazed washer is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and illustrated in Qing Monochromes, Taipei, 1981, p. 85, no. 36. Another example, formerly in the collection of Edwin C. Vogel and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is published by Aschwin Lippe in “The Edwin C. Vogel Collection of Chinese Porcelain,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, January 1958, p. 168, no. 5. A further related example is recorded in Chinese Porcelain: The S. C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, Part II, pl. 150, where the author notes that it belongs to the small group of imperial wares bearing a Kangxi reign mark written in three vertical columns of two characters each, without enclosing lines.
Kangxi mark-and-period clair-de-lune-glazed vessels are exceedingly rare, and surviving examples tend to be refined scholar’s objects. The present vessel, of compressed globular form with a broad, inverted mouth, is known in Chinese as a tangluo xi, literally a gong-shaped washer, its low, rounded profile recalling the silhouette of a bronze musical instrument of gong. A comparable clair-de-lune-glazed washer is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and illustrated in Qing Monochromes, Taipei, 1981, p. 85, no. 36. Another example, formerly in the collection of Edwin C. Vogel and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is published by Aschwin Lippe in “The Edwin C. Vogel Collection of Chinese Porcelain,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, January 1958, p. 168, no. 5. A further related example is recorded in Chinese Porcelain: The S. C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, Part II, pl. 150, where the author notes that it belongs to the small group of imperial wares bearing a Kangxi reign mark written in three vertical columns of two characters each, without enclosing lines.