T his rare pair of bowls which feature in Sotheby’s upcoming Paris Asian Art sale on 11 December, belong to a small group of wares decorated with vibrantly coloured designs on a pink or coral-red ground, inscribed with yuzhi marks indicating that they were made for Imperial use.
It is most likely that they were decorated in Jingdezhen, even if their marks may indicate direct use at the palace. Until the craftsmen of Jingdezhen became acquainted with the newly developed famille rose palette of the Palace Workshops, they continued to work in the dominant famille verte palette of the Kangxi period.
Bowls of this type are held in important private and museum collections worldwide; a pair in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is illustrated in Porcelain with Painted Enamels of Qing Yongzheng Period, Taipei, 2013.
Similar bowls with Yongzheng yuzhi, Yongzheng nianzhi, as well as six-character Yongzheng and Qianlong reign marks are illustrated in The Tsui Museum of Art. Chinese Ceramics IV. Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1995, pls. 158-60 and 166, together with a rare Palace Workshop example with a Kangxi yuzhi mark in pink enamel.
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