THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN 
A RARE FAMILLE ROSE LIME-GROUND BALUSTER VASE

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A RARE FAMILLE ROSE LIME-GROUND BALUSTER VASE
IRON-RED QIANLONG SEAL MARK AND OF THE PERIOD

Finely painted on each side with landscape panels of figures and buffalo tending paddy fields in the early spring, enclosed by a barbed hexafoil gilt border, all reserved on a lime-green sgraffiatio ground with flowering springs including peony, prunus, chrysanthemum, magnolia, narcissus, orchids, rose, lotus, morning glories, camellia and lillies, with tusked elephant-mask handles below the gilt rim, the interior and base glazed turquoise (restored rim chip)--15 3/4in. (40cm.) high

Lot Essay

The pair to this vase was offered for sale in these Rooms, 25 October 1993, lot 752; no other examples of this rare pattern are recorded.

More common types of floral decoration reserved on sgraffitio grounds are on undulating vines with feathery elements, such as the iron-red-marked Qianlong meiping with various flower sprigs on a ruby-ground from the Fonthill Heirlooms and Roger Lam Collection illustrated by Moss, By Imperial Command, pl. 83; and another Qianlong ruby-ground hu, illustrated in Sekai Toji Zenshu, Shogakukan Series, vol. 15, pl. 230.

The landscape panels can be seen on several published wares. Cf. a Qianlong doucai moonflask with similar panels illustrated in Colour Porcelain in Ming and Qing Dynasties, col. pl. 64; another Qianlong flask painted with related panels in wucai enamels in the Roemer Museum, Hildesheim, is illustrated by Wiesner in the Ohlmer Collection Catalogue, no. 57 where the author notes, on p. 114, that the scenes are derived from the Genzhitu, or the Illustrations of Ploughing and Weaving, published about 1739.

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