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

This pair of washers belongs to a very rare group of finely potted, enameled and monochrome washers bearing Kangxi reign marks. A famille verte example, from the E.T. Chow Collection, decorated with a dragon and carp emerging from waves, was sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 11 April 2008, lot 3021, and another from the T.T. Tsui Collection, decorated with butterflies and blossoming branches, was sold at Christie's London, 16 November 1999, lot 217. A black-ground green-glazed example with a landscape scene, also from the J.M. Hu Collection, and later in the Greenwald Collection, was most recently sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 1 December 2010, lot 2814.
Lobed brush washers in different monochrome palettes include a clair-de-lune-glazed example illustrated in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, pl. 217; a celadon-glazed example included in the O.C.S. exhibition, The Chinese Scholar's Desk - 17th to 18th century, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1979, no. 28, subsequently sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 20-21 May 1987, lot 112; and a gilt-decorated, celadon-glazed example in the Palace Museum, Beijing, decorated with a landscape scene, is illustrated in Qingdai Yuyao Ciqi, Vol. I, Part 1, Beijing, 2005, pp. 300-1, no. 110.
A Kangxi-marked famille verte-decorated washer, also from the J.M Hu Collection, decorated with carp emerging from waves, but with a circular rather than a lobed profile, was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 28 November 2005, lot 1374.