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Lot Essay
This lavishly decorated jar embodies the Qianlong Emperor’s admiration for Ming-dynasty fahua porcelains. The fahua technique employs raised lines to provide outlines and color divisions on ceramics decorated with colored glazes. The technique was often combined with either a cobalt blue or a turquoise ground.
In the eighteenth century, the raised designs become very delicate and precise. On the present jar, the decorative beaded bands and lower border of crashing waves create a broad expanse for the tranquil scene of white egrets in a lotus pond, all set against a rich mottled blue ground. A virtually identical jar with a cover is in the Matsuoko Museum of Art, Tokyo. (Fig. 1) A Qianlong mark-and-period fahua-style covered jar of different shape, but with very similar decoration, is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and illustrated in Catalog of the Special Exhibition of K’ang-hsi, Yung-cheng and Ch’ien-lung Porcelain from the Ch’ing Dynasty in the National Palace Musuem, Taipei, 1986, no. 81. See, also, the Qianlong mark-and-period fahua-style covered jar from the Wang Xing Lou Collection with a virtually identical lotus pond scene, but rendered in turquoise and famille rose enamels with gilt highlights against a sapphire-blue ground, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 May 2022, lot 2722. (Fig. 2)
In the eighteenth century, the raised designs become very delicate and precise. On the present jar, the decorative beaded bands and lower border of crashing waves create a broad expanse for the tranquil scene of white egrets in a lotus pond, all set against a rich mottled blue ground. A virtually identical jar with a cover is in the Matsuoko Museum of Art, Tokyo. (Fig. 1) A Qianlong mark-and-period fahua-style covered jar of different shape, but with very similar decoration, is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and illustrated in Catalog of the Special Exhibition of K’ang-hsi, Yung-cheng and Ch’ien-lung Porcelain from the Ch’ing Dynasty in the National Palace Musuem, Taipei, 1986, no. 81. See, also, the Qianlong mark-and-period fahua-style covered jar from the Wang Xing Lou Collection with a virtually identical lotus pond scene, but rendered in turquoise and famille rose enamels with gilt highlights against a sapphire-blue ground, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 May 2022, lot 2722. (Fig. 2)