• Collected in America: Chinese  auction at Christies

    Sale 13753

    Collected in America: Chinese Ceramics from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    New York

    |

    15 September 2016

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    • AN UNDERGLAZE COPPER-RED AND B
    • AN UNDERGLAZE COPPER-RED AND B
    • AN UNDERGLAZE COPPER-RED AND B
    • AN UNDERGLAZE COPPER-RED AND B
    Lot 920

    AN UNDERGLAZE COPPER-RED AND BLUE 'MALLET' VASE, YAOLING ZUN

    KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND OF THE PERIOD (1662-1722)

    Price realised

    USD 50,000

    Estimate

    USD 6,000 - USD 8,000

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    AN UNDERGLAZE COPPER-RED AND BLUE 'MALLET' VASE, YAOLING ZUN
    KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND OF THE PERIOD (1662-1722)
    The high-shouldered body is finely painted in copper red with four circular medallions in the form of archaistic mirrors positioned above a band of upright blades rising from a herringbone band divided and outlined by fine lines in pale underglaze blue, beneath the tall, slightly waisted neck which rises from a bow-string band at its base.
    9 in. (22.7 cm.) high

    Provenance

    Robert West Collection.
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accessioned in 1950.

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    • Margaret Gristina (葛曼琪)

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    Lot Essay

    The elegant form of this vase, with its long, slender, slightly waisted neck rising from pronounced shoulders, is particularly associated with the Kangxi reign. In Chinese the name often given to this form is yaoling zun, or 'hand bell vase'. The reference is to bronze bells, which formed part of the repertoire of Chinese instruments used in formal secular and religious music, although pottery bells of similar, if less refined form, were made in China as early as the Neolithic period.

    Vases of this form appear decorated both in underglaze cobalt blue and also, like the current example, in underglaze copper red with underglaze-blue lines encircling the base. Both types have underglaze-blue six-character Kangxi marks. An underglaze-blue example in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 36 - Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (III), Hong Kong, 2000, p. 15, no. 11. An underglaze copper-red-decorated yaoling zun in the collection of the Tianjin Museum is illustrated in Porcelains from the Tianjin Municipal Museum, Hong Kong, 1993, no. 130. Another copper-red example is in the collection of the Shanghai Museum, and illustrated in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, pp. 10-11, no. 7.

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