QIANLONG SIX-CHARACTER SEAL MARKS IN IRON RED AND OF THE PERIOD (1736-1795)

This exquisite tea bowl and cover is a masterpiece of the 18th-century imperial kilns at Jingdezhen. It is a successful combination of colour, composition and texture on a three-dimensional space. The making of this bowl and cover was an especially difficult one that required the utmost finesse and precision. After the initial firing, the bowl and cover were enamelled in pale pink and then exquisitely painted with a pair of dragon and phoenix in puce enamel, with clouds and other secondary elements in blue enamel. Of special note is the pale pink-enamelled ground, which was finely incised with a feathery scroll in a design known as jinshang tianhua, ‘flower brocade’, which did not appear on porcelain prior to the Qianlong reign, and was particularly effective in creating a more textured surface and a more layered effect conveying a sense of depth.

There are two versions of this ‘flower brocade’, applied to the two most esteemed types of porcelains made for the Qianlong court falangcai and yangcai. In one group the delicate scroll or lattice on the background enamel was painted, while in the other the design was incised into the background enamel. The current bowl and cover belongs to the latter group, yet distinguishes itself from other examples in this group by having the scroll design incised into the background enamel after, as opposed to before, the enamelled design on top.

The painting of the puce-enamelled dragon and phoenix is exceptionally fine and is comparable in quality and style to the painting of the phoenix found on the pink-enamelled blue and white moonflask from the Shorenstein Collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1 December 2010, lot 2968 (fig. 1).

No other tea bowl and cover with the same intricate design and colour combination appears to have been published. Similar examples are found with iron-red decoration reserved on a white-enamelled sgraffito ground, such as a tea bowl and cover in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Kangxi Yongzheng Qianlong, Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1995, p. 332, no. 13, opposite to a similarly decorated cup and cup stand, see ibid., p. 333, no. 14; another tea bowl and cover in the Nanjing Museum, illustrated in Treasures in the Royalty: The Official Kiln Porcelain of the Chinese Qing Dynasty, Nanjing, 2003, p. 276; one from the Collections of Mrs. Henry J. Bernheim, and The Met Museum, sold at Christie’s New York, 15 September 2016, lot 967 (fig. 2); and a pair of cups in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Special Exhibition of K’ang-hsi, Yung-cheng and Ch’ieng-lung Porcelain Ware from the Ch’ing Dynasty, Taipei, 1986, p. 154, no. 128.